Groves Family Happenings: Halloween!

Way back in July I asked Lily what she wanted to be for Halloween. "A dragon," she told me without hesitation. "Okay," I replied, sure that in the coming months she would change her mind. She did not. Then, about a month before Halloween, while over at a friend's house, discussing with some other mommies what their children were going to be for Halloween, I mentioned Lily wanting to be a dragon. One of my friend's spoke up, saying her mom had bought a dragon costume for her son after Halloween last year, but he wasn't going to use it and offering it for our use. A free costume to boot! A couple weeks later I picked up the costume. It was actually an alligator costume, but Lily didn't seem to mind. She loved looking at her costume, but was reluctant to try it on. Eventually we coaxed her into it and she was hooked!
Matt has an obsession with those cheesy Halloween stores that pop up in all manner of vacant store fronts for a couple months each year. While visiting one, he found an actual dragon costume, in Lily's size, and bought it. Lily wasn't having it. She wanted to wear the "dragon" costume she had. And though marked size 3-4, I sincerely doubt Lily would have fit in the new costume last Halloween, when she was only 18 months old. We attempted to return it, but those silly stores have an all sales final policy. We tried arguing that the costume was not as represented, blah, blah...we eventually convinced the kid to let up exchange the costume for some candy, batteries, etc. (I think I was successful it getting Matt to agree that those stores are hopeless wastes of money which we will not be stepping foot in again.)
On Halloween day we went trick or treating around our neighborhood a bit, but it was quite lackluster. Hardly anyone was home, despite being a Sunday afternoon. We decided to put our candy to give out in a bowl on front porch (which I was surprised to find still had candy in it when we returned!) and head to my in-laws for a little trick or treating in their neighborhood. OH.MY.WORD!!! We won't even waste time in our neighborhood in the future - we will just head right over to their house! Almost every house had someone home, there were tons of people out, and everyone was super nice. Thankfully everyone asked "And what are you?" so Lily could tell them she was a nice dragon. I don't even think one person called her a alligator! Lily had a lot of fun and was more interested in actually going up to every house than the actual candy.

Lily painting one of our many pumpkins from pumpkin patch.

The nice dragon next to the pumpkins I spent the morning carving. Note to self: bigger pumpkins have thicker walls, and are a huge pain (literally!) to carve! It took me forever and my forearms were sore for days!