Happy Halloween!

We had such a fun Halloween this year! Halloween fell on a Friday, which was so nice. After weeks of us asking Nolan what he wanted to be, we went with a Train Engineer (like "Mr Perkins" from Thomas). After some drama of my first order from Amazon not fitting (the hat was tiny!), I was able to find a cute outfit at a local halloween store instead. The pants were too long, but I used my semi-crafty skills to fix them with iron-on hem tape. Of course he refused to wear the outfit at home, and I was worried he wouldn't put it on for halloween but sent it to school anyway for the parade. School worked some miracles because as we anxiously awaited the parade outside, out walked Nolan fully dressed and happy!

Our first glimpse of Nolan at his school parade! He's walking with his current favorite teacher, Miss Ashley, and his buddy Mia.

Nolan looking for us (we hid so that he would walk longer in the parade!) Once he sees us, the parade is over for him!

A big smile when he finally finds us!

Headed right to Mommy!

My little engineer :)

Showing daddy all the cars and trucks going by the school

My boys can't be any cuter!

Nolan wanted to play in the school playgrounds as soon as he saw us. 

I wanna go in there and play!

Not now mommy!

As we picked up his things at school, he got a quick play on some of the indoor toys before we headed home.

We stopped to pick up some dinner on the way home, but unfortunately Nolan started complaining that his "Tummy hurt" shortly after eating. His teacher mentioned he was complaining about the same thing during the day and sure enough, up came all of his dinner minutes before we were supposed to head out the door to meet friends to go trick or treating. My heart sank - I really didn't want him to miss out on trick or treating this year, and we were planning on driving to NJ straight after to spend the night at my parent's house before Joe and I went into NYC for an anniversary weekend getaway. What awful timing! I asked Nolan how he felt after throwing up and if he still wanted to go trick or treating (we had been hyping it up for weeks). He said he felt better and still wanted to go. I figured we'd give it a try - at least we'd be outside so if he threw up again, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. I was hoping his tummy was just upset from the junk he was eating at their halloween party at school.

So off we went over to Havertown, the next town over, to meet with some friends and join in with their kids trick or treating. There was a nice range of ages in the group - both older and younger than Nolan. Since I knew how much Nolan would enjoy Trick or Treating this year, I didn't want Joe to miss out on the fun (I quickly took him to a few houses myself last year). We left a bucket of candy at our front door to cover our house while we were gone. 

I'm so glad we took the chance and still went Trick or Treating... Nolan LOVED it! He got the concept right away, and even started yelling "Trick or Treat!" to people at their doors. He was so polite, only taking one candy when offered (even when they said to take more) and always saying an enthusiastic "Thank you!" to each person. We probably did about 20 houses since this neighborhood was easily walkable with homes close together. Nolan wanted to keep on going, but towards the end his pumpkin was so heavy he could barely carry it! Some photos from the night are below - it was hard to get good ones in the dark and I was blinding everyone with my flash so we only took a few :)

Nolan's only complaint from the evening was that "he didn't get to push the doorbells" since the older kids were racing ahead and getting to the houses first. I promised him next year we'd take him to a few houses by himself so he could push the door bells. Also, the great news was that no more vomiting occurred that weekend so it must have been some of the food wasn't sitting well in his little tummy. As far as all the candy, Nolan wasn't very interested in eating it this year (but we didn't exactly advertise it either). He loved collecting it, but never asked to eat it or where it went after (mostly in mommy and daddy's stomach! haha). Our bucket in front of the house was empty in the hour and a half we were gone... not surprising I guess! I kept some extra candy in the house and had a few more trick or treaters come by before we headed out to NJ. Halloween is such a fun holiday with kids and I'm already looking forward to experiencing it again next year!