Great Giant Pumpkin! That Was a Great Halloween!

This year Walter, Padon, and I were invited to a Halloween Party with the theme "Come As Your Alter Ego!" Walter and I were stumped as to what our alter ego would be but if Padon had an alter ego, one such ego would definitely be a puppy and a puppy costume I could do! I also already had the fabric for it and was in the mist of sewing Padon some new pajamas, so using the pattern I had already created for the pajamas, I made him a Puppy costume and it came out awesome!

Poor Bean! I didn't realize how tried he was until after I took this picture and took a good look at his face.

The Wednesday before Halloween our friends Joel and Stacey invited us to come with them to the annual Trick or Trunk party at their church. It sounded like a lot of fun and a great way to introduce Padon to Halloween. Stacey was amazingly helpful as we went through the festively decorated rooms where there were games to play and prizes to win. There were small children running in and out and helping Padon while maneuvering my pregnant self was proving to be really difficult so for the most part Stacey took Padon through all the activities: musical Halloween cut outs, bobbing for donuts, feeling for body parts (Padon ate the spaghetti intestines and so we stopped there and left the room), haunted hallway (too scary, we turned around and went back), putt-putt golf, bowling, pin the nose on the Jack-o-Lantern, and a bean bag toss. At every station Padon got a prize no matter how he did and that was just so cool.
About an hour into the rooms everyone evacuated the building to start the Trunk portion of the Trick or Trunk party. In a portion of the parking lot there were roughly 20-25 cars with their trunks open (most decorated in a Halloween theme) and in the trunks sat someone handing out candy. It was like hitting a bunch of houses but in 20 minutes flat. Padon was super cute, walked up to every car said "trick or treat", said "thank you", and then ended with the most adorable little 2 year old voiced "Bye!". By the 6th car or so Padon threw out the need to say thank you and just said bye but everyone thought he was so adorable. And he was so caught up in the large amount of candy being offered to him that he kept pausing at cars and staring into their bowl of candy just mesmerized which often awarded him another piece of candy from the awwwwwing and touched candy holder.

I think Padon was a tad overwhelmed but went with it in a state of "wow!" with Walter from car to car.
The Trick or Trunk Party was a great introduction to Halloween. I had already decided that instead of attending the booze fest that would be the Halloween party Walter and I had been invited too I would stay home with Padon who would sleep better in his bed and where I wouldn't feel so out of place not being able to drink the booze offered (Walter went to the party as a Vault 42 Fallout character). Everett Mall was having their annual Trick or Treat sponsored by KMPS and I thought that would be a great thing for Padon and I to do. He was more than happy to get back into his Puppy costume on Saturday, and off we went. We both were overwhelmed when we arrived. We entered through Sears and hit a wall of people circulating the mall. There was no real starting point and so we just joined the line of people shuffling from store to store collecting candy. I kid you not! Every single store in the mall, including the food court was giving out candy with the exception of maybe 20 stores.

Even the cleaning staff was dressed up! I thought this guy was great!

Padon had a great time looking at the other kids, commenting on their masks and costumes, and he did a great job of moving through the grade school kids to the candy gifters, saying Trick or Treat and collecting his candy. After I explained that you shouldn't touch people who haven't asked you to because it makes them feel funny, Padon stopped touching the other kid's costumes and would point at them and say "Don't touch!" and then elaborate about what he thought was neat about their costumes (Incredible Hulk's teeth for example). Too cute! He was really impressed with the plastic pumpkin trick or treat buckets (for the life of me I hadn't been able to find one to buy him in time for Halloween) that were a multitude of colors including orange, yellow, and blue. He was most impressed with one that looked like Elmo's head.
Padon ate some candy while we were walking in the line and just when I thought we had, had enough, and was about to propose to Padon that we get out of line I saw Sears again. We had actually done the whole mall! To end this trick or treat excursion properly we plunked ourselves down in a big open patch of floor in the middle of the mall and I let Padon go through his bag. We went through 5 lollipops (opened at the same time and passed off as one was sampled after another), one Smarty (he gave me the first one, aaaaahhhhhhwwwwwww ), one box of nerds, one piece of gum, and a package of chewy life savers before Padon got bored and got up to play with the gumball machine island stationed near us. The lollipops were so reminisent of Patrick having found Jane's stash of lollipops and being caught with them all in his mouth.

Padon and I ended the night eatting popcorn and watching "The Nightmare before Christmas." Padon sweetly treated Romeo (cat) and Roadie (dog) to some popcorn which I tried to inforce was only ok because it was Halloween and we didn't do that on any other days.

He had a really good time and Walter and I have created a small candy monster. Eh!, was bound to happen sooner or later.