Hood Halloween

Typically, I appreciate Halloween as one of the holidays
that exists as a single day rather than an entire season, but this year
it seemed to stretch out a bit and it was just right.

Around these parts, October weather is a bit unpredictable, so it took us a while after our big visit to the pumpkin patch to find a day appropriate for pumpkin carving. But it finally happened! Daylight! No rain! Above 40 degrees! It was pumpkin time!

You won’t be surprised to learn Colt was so excited he couldn’t stand it. He begged me for days to “carve punkins”. But when the time came, he was over it shortly after we started. I guess no one had really prepared him for the scooping of pumpkin guts — so he did a lot of… supervising.

While my parents were here we spent 97 cents on a little piece of orange plastic (shown above, in Colt’s hand) from Walmart that promised to make pumpkin carving easier. My advice to you for future pumpkin carving: SPEND THE 97 CENTS. That little orange scooper is worth every penny and then some.

So pumpkin carving wasn’t the thrill of his life, but he was pretty happy with our resulting jack-o-lantern. He also insisted that we get a fake candle for the inside because he’s seen one too many episodes of Fireman Sam and schooled me on the fire hazard that is jack-o-lanterns.

And then! Our friends Matt and Nancy recently moved and had to cut down a HUGE tree in their new yard. HUGE. So — they had a bonfire and invited a bunch of us over to enjoy the night and let our kids run around in the dark like animals. It was such a good time.

Though it didn’t turn out to be an omen of good things to come for the home team, we saw something special in the shape of the fire. Do you see it??

And then! Trick-or-treating! This kid loves to dress the part and knew exactly what he wanted for Halloween this year. A worker bee!

Our sweet friends Amanda and Justin invited us to trick-or-treat in their neighborhood with their kiddos John and Caroline. Here’s the crew: Darth Vader, Worker Bee, and the Ocean Fairy (her skirt lit up – it was awesome!)

Before we took off around the neighborhood, Amanda offered to snap a photo of the three of us. She took this ONE photo. All of us are looking AND smiling AND have our eyes open. Clearly she has magic camera powers — usually I have to take 12 photos and Frankenstein our heads around with Photoshop to get a shot like this!

Here’s a shot of the kids “practicing” at Amanda’s house before we left.

It was tough to get photos after it got dark – which happened quickly – so I tried a video instead. Imagine this on repeat. For an hour.

“Trick or Treat!”
{Candy.}
“Say THANK YOU!”
{Pause, mid-scramble to next house.}
“Thank you!”

Trick-or-Treat from Sarah Hood on Vimeo.

Happy Halloween!