Halloween 2019!

Oh. My. Stinking. GoodNESS.

I’ve felt it for several years now, but I’m finally putting my official stamp on it:

Halloween is an exhausting holiday! Ha.

Perhaps even more so than the actual day of Thanksgiving or Christmas, because those are typically family/food/stay-at-home holidays, whereas Halloween is mass fun and social CHAOS out in the wild.

Which means I am truly feeling my “Halloween Hangover” today, but I wouldn’t change a thing.

(Well, maybe one thing, but more on that in a minute.)

So...the day kicked off with a fun little costume parade at Little Man’s preschool, and a really boisterous round of classroom reading and crafts for Chicklet. 

It was my first time in Chicklet’s classroom this year, and it was a total riot and joy to be around all those amazeballs little kindergarteners, as always. They are such a hot mess and so wonderful that it makes me appreciate teachers the world over, all the more. 



Grandma and Grandpa were here this year for the craziness, and they certainly delivered on the costume front, tehe.



And one by one, after school and some regrouping downtime, our little trick-or-treaters got suited up.

(For anyone remembering Chica’s Wonder-Woman costume from prior events, don’t worry, it’s still around. But given the very chilly day, and Chica’s ever-growing love for Harry Potter, we pulled a little switcheroo and assembled a Hermione costume, mostly from items she already owned. :)





Oh, and say helloooo to our pinch-hitting replacement inflatable decoration, ha.



After our fun spooky house arch died in the storm (it still inflated when we retrieved it from the neighbor’s yard, but the tabs that helped to stake it in the ground were ripped), we had to return it and buy a smaller replacement for the final Halloween days. 

Now, around this time, Chicklet (and sort of Little Man) were sooooo over the gazillions of pictures, ha. All part of the Halloween experience, yes? ;)

And they were probably over all the pictures because they knew we were headed to a party and wanted to get there, already. 

Which brings me the thing I’m most grateful for this Halloween: the lovely neighborly vibe we really got to enjoy, thanks to one of the sweetest new friends I’ve met through our neighborhood, women’s Bunco group.

Her family hosts an annual pre-trick-or-treating get together, and it was so wonderful to be able to make contact with a handful of families we’re getting to know, and to let the kiddos be wild and all hyped-up with some little friends. :)



And then, after some food and social time, we unleashed them all as the sun set, and the craziness truly ramped up.

My kiddos were racing from house to house, alongside a couple of their little friends from down the street, and they were having a blast. And it was just as you want it to be for Halloween. Which truly made my heart ridiculously happy, because we had a pretty picture-perfect Halloween neighborhood in Dallas, and I was skeptical that this one could match up. Especially with more older kiddos in the neighborhood, and with larger lots to make travel on foot a bit lengthier.

Now speaking of travel on foot...we come to the one (sort of major) hiccup to our spooky awesomeness.

As Chica and the other kiddos were racing from house to house, across some of those larger lots, they often took shortcuts through landscaping instead of sticking to sidewalks, and during one of those shortcuts, Chica had a run-in with...A CACTUS.

All of a sudden, she pulled up short and was examining her leg, and then the screams began. When I ran to her and busted out the flashlight to unearth the problem, I discovered 20 or 30 cactus prickles (spikes? Pokie thingies?) imbedded in her shin. I mean, talk about AWFUL.

We had to begin on-site extraction of as many as we could. And my poor eldest was being so brave, but just sobbing for band-aids. So I totally started running, Terminator-style down the half-mile stretch toward home (in my cheeseburger costume, mind you), to retrieve supplies. But as I was on my way back to the cactus injury site, I discovered the hubby, hauling her on piggyback to the house, because the extraction was just too precarious to handle outside in the dark. :(

My poor eldest was trying so hard to be brave, but she was in PAIN, and it was a difficult process, and she was just so sad to be missing out on the Halloween candy fun.

Eventually, we got the sweet girl as patched-up as possible, so we could get her back outside for a few more houses before it got too late and our window closed.

It was, well...exhausting. Oye. But our sweet, sweet girl, through her tears, just sobbed, “if it had to happen to someone (*pause to hiccup sob), I’m glad it happened to me.”

I mean...stab to the gut. Even injured and so sad, she was thinking of others and how glad she was that nobody else faced off against the cactus.

I was so grateful that her mood bounced back as she limped a bit to a couple of really cool, spooky houses:

And then we made it back home with a decent amount of loot, and certainly a story to remember from this first Halloween in San Antonio!



As I think through the solid 4-6 weeks of spooky crafts and books and costumes and decorations, I’m so grateful for this season and all of the fun it entailed. 

Despite our ever-busier schedules, I feel like we made the time to really live up this Halloween ramp-up and allow it to help us feel even more settled in this new house and city of ours.

And, today, amidst my Halloween Hangover...I may or may not have managed to order our family holiday pajamas and our Christmas cards. Tehe.

Onwards and upwards.

Thanksgiving...heeeeeere we come!

Over and out.