Happy Halloween

I have a confession to make. I don't like Halloween. I'm sure that I got this from my mom. She has always hated Halloween. It's a very dark holiday, with all of the ghosts, goblins, witches, and other scary things. She always had my sisters and me dress up as harmless characters like clowns (we each had to do that several times) or Raggedy Ann. Once I got out on my own, it seemed that Halloween was just an excuse for girls to wear the skimpiest outfits possible with some ears and a tail and call themselves cats or bunnies or something equally nonsensical.

As a mom, I still don't love Halloween. If you enter my home, you can tell. We have our carved pumpkins outside, because that's a really fun things to do with the kids. Inside there are a few very small Halloween decorations - a small black cat, a wooden witch someone gave me years ago - and the infamous witch legs that hold candy for trick-or-treaters. I prefer fall decorations like pumpkins, gourds, and multi-colored leaves. But I've learned to appreciate Halloween for the joy it brings to my kids. This month has been really fun in my little MusicMakers group, where we've sung fun Halloween songs and used ghosts and bats and witches and spiders as props. And for our final October meeting we had a party where all of the kids wore their costumes. We made witches' brew, felt decaying body parts in the dark (spaghetti noodles for brains, peeled grapes for eyes, a peeled tomato for a heart, hot dogs for fingers, etc.), and decorated sugar cookies. The best part of Halloween as a parent is taking the little ones trick-or-treating. It's fun to visit all of our friends and neighbors, and even more fun to see the delight in the kids' eyes as they fill their bags with candy.

So I don't hate Halloween anymore. I look forward to how much fun it will be for the kids. Here are the cute little trick-or-treaters (you can tell that Aidan didn't enjoy dressing up as much as the other kids):

And now for another confession. I'm in love. I'm infatuated. I'm OBSESSED with the new man in my life. I want to spend every waking moment holding and loving the little guy. I took him to the ward book club last week (just to show him off), and when he started cooing and looking at me with his sweet little eyes, I wanted to run home so that I could get in his face and coo back at him for half an hour like I do when I'm not in public.

Now he's crying and fussing at me for ignoring him while I wrote this post. It's no wonder I haven't blogged for two months! I'll leave you with some pictures of him:

I know, he's adorable!