Halloween 2015

We had a ghoulish good time this year at our ward's Halloween trunk or treat.

We took along our fierce Ninja fighter

And our sweet Care Bear.

Fierce.

Sweet.

Alina quickly decided that even a sweet good luck bear needed a few ninja moves to protect those cute cheeks.

The conundrum of choosing costumes is always a bit tricky for me. As a parent, I don't subscribe to specific brands and somehow our pattern of bringing toys into our home has never lent itself to my children latching on to one brand or another. Alina likes her care bear, but she also likes her no-name teddy and her Cabbage Patch doll. David was happy to be a super hero again this year, but he was indifferent between Spider man and Super man.

So we went looking for costumes with a wide range of possibilities. When David saw this light-up ninja costume, he was sold (the yellow edging all around the shield part blinked lights). It was the lighting feature, not the ninja, that was the selling point. But while he wore the lights, he played Ninja very well.

Sam and I were perusing a pop-up costume store on one of our date nights, and we came across this Care Bear costume. It was labeled as being for a 10 year old girl. Ummm. No. I would never let my 10 year old girl wear a costume that reaches the knees of my 2-year old. For our toddler, however, it was perfect. All of her cozy snow gear fit under the costume, and you have to admit that those round cheeks finish off the costume perfectly. I brought it home with a plan to alter it a bit. But once we put it on with the snow gear, we didn't need to alter it. Alina rocked the costume just the way it was.

After the trunk or treat, I let David knock a few doors while Alina warmed up in the back seat and I drove along with David. I thought Alina had fallen asleep in her carseat, until she passed up a piece of candy that she couldn't unwrap by herself. Upon turning around, I found that her fingers were capable of opening most of the sugary goodness on her own. Alina, didn't your mother ever teach you to let her eat all the best stuff sort it before you eat your halloween candy? Apparently she missed that part. She was happy as a sugar plum fairy in a cozy green care bear suit.

As for David, he was his independent self at the trunk or treat. Daddy stayed home with a stomach bug, so I was on my own. Passing out candy, hanging on to my care bear in an ice skating rink of a parking lot and keeping up with David proved to be too much. I finally handed my candy bowl over to be passed out by someone else, and held tightly to Alina after she took a nasty slip (good thing she was so well padded, or that fall from feet to back would have ruined our night). When it was time to pack up, I put Alina in her carseat, turned the car on for warmth, and went to find David. After several minutes of going from car to car (and a bit of a panic, wondering whose trunk he had climbed into) I finally found him inside the church hallway, with his candy spread out all around him. Apparently Alina wasn't the only one that missed the message of my lecture on saving the candy for the house. Thankfully, the trunk or treat is a group of friends that we associate with so their bags were safer than if we had just been going around to strangers.