I have come to find very quickly that any holiday may be just as exciting for me as it is for anyone else in our household. Give me a reason to bake, cook, decorate, or just plain get festive and my excited juices start flowing. 
For example, when my office decided to actually dress up for Halloween, I was pumped, even though it was only a week till the big day and I only had the weekend to find my costume. Anyone knows it is never a bright idea to wait till the weekend before to find anything. Plus, I’m a planner. I like having my stuff ready to go. My kids’ costumes, Ariel from The Little Mermaid for Callie and a triceratops for Clayton, had been purchased a month before.
But, determined to find my perfect costume, I set off that Saturday with two young toddlers in tow. Just as suspected, no costumes left. I drug my very fussy kids to every store, hoping to find the perfect costume. Finally…after many candy bribes and scoldings; I found what I was looking for. A non-hooker Dorothy. Hooray! I woke up in anticipation October 31st for the fun to begin. My kids wore little orange shirts with jack-o-lanterns on them. We’d baked cookies and cupcakes the day before with colorful frosting and little Halloween décor.
My friend Amber has a little shin-dig every year that we attend that’s in our old neighborhood, great food and wine, and of course great friends. We look forward to it every year and Callie of course acts like a kid on Christmas; she loves dressing up. You can imagine how disappointed I was however, when my little one and ½ year-old wouldn’t dress up. I finally got him to wear the head-part of the dinosaur (bribery of course) for this photo, but that was it. Then, once we headed trick-or-treating, he was going to sit in the stroller, thank you very much! There’d be none of this talking to strangers stuff. And when his small collection of nerds ran out…he was throwing a fit and ready to go home.
So while my daughter and I rallied, my husband headed home early with our son. Callie, usually the head of the pack with her little BFF (Amber’s daughter) Audrey, had no problem knocking on people’s doors she’d never met and demanding candy. Their cute little buckets were nearly overflowing by the time they were actually ready to head home.
Nights like this never turn out the way you imagine. However, I realized as I bustled about after my little four-year-old with the bright red wig; this is what life is truly about. Just seeing the excitement on her face, and her joy in doing something so fun—surrounded by great friends and family. I’ll take it, even if it includes running around in a hideous Dorothy costume with huge, gaudy red slippers.
*Make sure you read Leah’s story, hilarious and endearing as always, in the prior post from last night.
~Trina
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