"Halloween is my faaaave-or-it day," Caden has been saying for weeks. The hype of costumes and candy is right up his three-year old alley. We 've been talking about knocking on doors and saying "trick-or-treat" and, yes, all the candy they'd be getting for days on end. It was the twins' third year out so they combined their collective knowledge to explain it all to Nolan, since clearly at 3 1/2 they're old pros now.
We decorated pumpkins over the weekend. Paint, googly eyes, sparkles, and glue. We went all out. Caden was surprisingly more meticulous than usual, while Brooklyn requested every color of pink that existed. Nolan was basically done before we even started, and I'm not sure whether more of his paint ended up on his pumpkin or his body (or possibly in his mouth).
But this Halloween was C-O-L-D. My weather app read 33 degrees as we were getting all bundled up to go out (because apparently the cold does bother Elsa a bit, after all). Except for Caden. He refused a winter coat, insisting that "Then I won't be Kristoff", so I layered a pair of sweatpants and an extra long-sleeved shirt underneath his costume, convinced him that Kristoff did indeed wear mittens, and sent his winter coat along for when he realized it was literally freezing out. Except he didn't. An hour of trick-or-treating and he didn't put that coat on once. Now that's commitment.
His costume was maybe the warmest of the bunch, and he's spent the past three weeks confusing everyone with his description of boot covers, ("Know what? You put the boots on first and then the shoes on underneath!"), which has been as integral an answer to the question, "What are you going to be for Halloween?", as the simple one of "Kristoff".
It was Nolan's first year to join the trick-or-treating fun, a fact I just realized right this very second, as I'm so used to the trio they are; our very own Williams gang. He was traumatized upon leaving by a teenager in a unicorn onesie, complete with ginormous unicorn head, but seems to have resigned himself pretty quickly to being pulled in along in the wagon in the dark and freezing temperatures. Probably thinking, for the umpteenth time in his 20-month long life, "What on Earth are these fools doing with me now?"
Caden's face in the photo at the right says that he's as sick as anyone of Elsa upstaging everything with all that "Let it Go" business.
They arrived home, buckets full, after nearly an hour. We told them they could dump out their candy and venture out again but they were content to stay in. Really, why go back out into the cold when you're carrying a candy feast right in your very own hands?
There was a strange juxtaposition this year, as the news out of New York broke right as we were getting ready for our Halloween festivities. I was dishing up pizza and cutting apple slices as I told Tyson what I had only just read. Of course, there wasn't much time to dwell on it -- besides the mind-numbing thought, "Again?!?" -- as we transitioned quickly from dinner to costumes to photos to begging for and giving out candy. There was a tension, and a weariness, yes, again, as I chatted up trick-or-treaters and refilled the candy bowl, and thought of our own joy and families who were experiencing tragedy instead.
If you follow me on Instagram, you may know that we still have ALL THE CANDY. What the heck, guys? I ran out of candy in about an hour a year ago. Since our neighborhood has grown in the past year I thought I learned my lesson and stocked up with 50% more this year, and instead became desperate and was ready to beg people to take it after two hours with our lights on. I know it was cold, but this is Minnesota, guys. I'm not sure exactly what this means for our Halloween candy-buying situation next year, but if you need a Halloween candy fix, say, sometime next June, you know who to hit up.
