The best things in life...aren't things: Trick or Treat

This was our first successful Halloween-finally!

The first year Caden was just two months old and my sister made an adorable candy corn costume to put him in. Unfortunately, he grew enough right at the end that we kind of had to shove him in there and the hat was a bit long and pointy, pushing offensive in some ways, and we were too sleep deprived (that's my excuse...) to realize the simple alterations that could have been made to fix it. Either way, we will always cute/funny pictures of that, but I can't even get myself to post them. This is in no way a no-thank you to my sister either. I was very thankful she made his candy corn costume, just didn't play out in the long run like Pinterest told me it would.

Year two my mom got Caden a cute little donkey/something costume. It would have been perfect for the cold weather and cute, but nope. He was NOT having it, as seen below. Then, last minute we (I don't think Gary would take any 'credit' for this, but I'll still say we...) decided we could make him the coach and wear Gary's old jersey shirts from his North High days. I mean, it could have worked...if we put more time into it. But the reality is we only did it to go over to his parents house and we sharpied 'COACH' on a shirt for Caden and gave the kid a whistle. Awesome...

So the first two years were just not ones for the books. We didn't take him trick or treating on either because of age, but this year we thought he'd enjoy it and really enjoy going with his cousins. It was still a bit tricky working that day and then rushing to get him changed and going. We took him to Kid to Kid this year and showed him the outfits they had, which he liked two, but wouldn't try them on. We knew this was 99.9% likely to be our situation, that he wouldn't wear an actual costume. So, we thought of a few options that wouldn't require putting him into anything, which is pretty hard for a toddler age. Everything toddler age from the store is a legit costume from head to toe. I couldn't swallow the fact of spending $30+ on a 30 minute ordeal that we would have to force him to be in anyways. SO...punk rocker it was. Easy enough, right?

Not at the start. He still didn't want to change into the simple regular clothes we had him wear. We snuck some dollar tree tattoo sleeves over a long sleeve shirt and put a cute little rocker boy shirt he already had over that. Had him in his jeans and converse shoes and added a little bandanna (thank you, again, Dollar Tree) to his back pocket and spiked his hair. I wanted to put some fun hair chalk in his hair too, but we just couldn't get that far. Before we knew it-we had a little punk on our hands.

Caden tackled all the big long steps up to the houses and kept up with the big kids pretty well. His excitement after the first house, and seeing that he was getting candy was priceless. He turned to me and exclaimed 'Mommy!!!!! I got candy!!!' in the cutest, most enthusiastic little voice ever and was so eager to run on to the next house and so cute saying 'trick or treat' as best as he could. His cousins, the Harry Potter gang, were sweet and helpful with him as well, per usual. Waiting for him, helping him up the steps and making sure he got up to the front to get some candy.

It was cold, and about one cul-de-sac in he started to slow down and we called it good. These were big cul-de-sacs, and he got half a bucket full of candy too so he was pretty set for this year. He was cold, tired, and we got in a good run. Definitely worth the rushing right after work and the hassle of getting him to look like a little punk. I'm excited for next year, too. Little babe will be less than a year, so certainly I should have some decent wiggle room and hopefully have a more compliant child regarding costumes, and Caden will be old enough to understand the costume idea and have a pick which should be fun...or interesting...we'll just have to wait and see!