Happy Halloween

I'm starting to realize that the week of Halloween will always be crazy in our house.  We have all our halloween festivities, and then 2 days later it's Hank's birthday.  It's felt like a whirlwind, but of course full of only fun things!  This year, Hank was old enough to really get excited about pumpkins, costumes, and candy.  After much debate (he insisted that he had to be Jessie from Toy Story, but dad put the kibosh on him dressing as a girl)  I really wasn't opposed, and thought it would always be a funny story; nonetheless we decided on a garden gnome.  Hank and I both have an affinity for gnomes, I have a collection of about 10 throughout the yard and Hank loves to go around and collect them, hug them, tell them he loves them etc.  I find my gnomes in the funniest places these days.  

Our neighborhood does a great Halloween parade and festival for the kids which we participated in with some playgroup friends.  Hank thoroughly enjoyed pumpkin carving; although he wouldn't touch the insides of the pumpkin telling me "that's gross mom".  We took him trick or treating, and introduced him to the world of candy-he ran into the house immediately dumped his bucket of loot and started asking "whats this, mom?"  I'd explain "a tootsie roll" or "dots" and now I'm constantly being pulled to the candy bucket with whines of "Hankey need tootsie roll". I try to explain that no one actually needs a tootsie roll; but this is lost on him.   He helped pass out candy to the trick or  treaters at our house, and enjoyed saying "happy halloween!" to everyone.  We always have a huge turnout at our house, and Johnny likes to keep a tally-this year we ran out of candy just shy of 300 kids, and had to turn away at least another 50.  It was a great Halloween season in our house-and just think, next year we'll have a 3 year old and a 7 month old!