A happy(ish) Halloween

With the exception of Jacob, Halloween went pretty much exactly the way I thought it would this year.

Abby finally committed to a costume and went door-to-door with her usual exuberance dressed as a cowgirl princess in her brother's plaid shirt, a sparkly tutu and a few accessories from the Lone Star State, courtesy of Uncle Matt.

I squeezed Levi into his horse costume, all the while debating the other children over whether or not it was a cow. (It's not.) Even Jacob got in on the argument, mooing up a storm to back up his older siblings. Abby finally conceded that Levi was a baby horse, even though it made perfect sense to her that a cowgirl should have a cow for a sidekick, not a foal.

Jacob was, for the most part, perfectly content to simply run around with his little plastic pumpkin stuffing it full of cars and blankets and whatever else he could find. That is, until his big brother came out dressed as a shark. Suddenly the game changed. "Duh duh!" he shouted, echoing the Jaws theme that our kids are convinced is the sound a shark makes. He made a mad dash for the dress-up box where he retrieved Caleb's old shark costume and proceeded to put it on. When he scored a Reese's cup and a big smile from a favorite neighbor at our first house, Jacob was hooked. And the kid I thought would be in bed by 7 ended up trick-or-treating with his big sister and his dad until almost 9 p.m. He loved every minute of it, and came home heavy laden with candy. Because seriously, who's going to tell the cute little shark with the big brown eyes to stop dipping his hand in the candy dish?

Caleb, dressed as a shark for Halloween for the second time in his life thanks to a fellow mom who knows him all too well, really, really wanted to go trick-or-treating. I told him he could stay home and help me hand out candy, but he wanted to give it a try. We got an early start while it was still light out, and made it to exactly two houses with him. And the fact that he only got four pieces of candy didn't bother him in the least. What did bother him was the dark, the smoke machine in the neighbor's yard, the pumpkins in a neighbor's window, and a kid in a wolf mask. We weren't the least bit surprised by his reaction. He's our sensitive little guy, always very in tune with his own feelings and the feelings of others. So when he said he wanted to go home, that's just what we did. He was more than happy to sit inside with Mommy and ignore the doorbell when it rang so he wouldn't have to see anyone dressed up in costumes. We put Levi to bed and listened to uplifting music and played games and ate his four pieces of candy while we waited on the rest of the family to come home. And before bed, he asked us to pray with him that he would forget about the scary wolf. I think next year, Caleb and I are skipping Halloween and going out for ice cream.