The Carstens: My Halloween Butterfly!

This year I hit two birds with one stone with Abby's Halloween costume. I was walking around Costco one day (because, seriously, who goes to Costco to get just what's on their list) and saw the Halloween rack with these festive looking tutus. As Abby has been very into dressing up lately, and loves wearing her cousin Haylee's long ballerina tutu, I thought that getting her her own tutu would be a big hit. Since it was a part of the costume I could spend $20 and got multiple uses out of her Halloween outfit. (And since this post is going up almost three weeks after Halloween I can state that her tutu has been worn almost every day. She's even started twirling in it!).

Since we're blessed to have lots of family in town Halloween was one of those days where we spent lots of time getting in and out of the car going to trick-or-treat with various family members. Our first stop was to the Uptown Center's Trick-or-Treating walk with some of Nate's family members. Have you ever been to one of these walking trick-or-treating locations? This was my first and I'll honestly say that I don't think I'll be going again. People were literally walking in a slow moving line around the outside of the buildings, and the ring of people went almost all the way around the block. People would walk towards a business door where they were passing out candy, hold out their bucket, maybe say "trick or treat" maybe not, and without stopping would continue on to the next door. Literally, no stopping. I'm sorry but candy must be earned! Where's the strategy for finding the neighborhood who gives out the best candy, figuring out how to hit a house twice because they give out King Size candy bars, and running as fast as you can from one house to the next as you don't want to waste precious candy gathering time by meandering. Hmpf. Kids these days.

When we first got to the Uptown Center Abby was a little overwhelmed by all the people there. (You can see a bit of the line behind us.)

Starting our trick-or-treating adventure. Abby felt VERY proud holding her pumpkin.

Then we jumped in line and got a few pieces of candy. Suddenly Abby was very interested in what all those people were doing. She didn't quite get the routine of trick-or-treating, though. As soon as a piece of candy went into her pumpkin she would stop walking and try to get the candy to eat. I kept putting the candy back in her bucket and coaxing her to keep moving.

However, when she was given a sucker (and since we had six pieces of candy already) I figured she'd earned her first candy of the night. This girl loves her suckers so I knew I wouldn't get too much walking out of her while she knew a sucker was so close at hand.

When we found a quiet spot she immediately snacked up the sucker and started to suck, wrapper and all.

She waited so patiently for me to unwrap the magical sucker of yumminess.

As soon as it was unwrapped she wanted nothing to do with it. :-) Kids!

After a bit she decided that her sucker was acceptable again.

Then another mob of trick-or-treaters descended upon our area and she got a little shy again. Again, notice the line in the back. It was like this (huge group, then a break, then another huge group) around the entire two or three block radius of buildings.

After leaving Paul, Sharon, and Melany I decided that this would be a good time to visit Nate at work since he was needing to work late that night, plus I wanted him to see her in her costume. It's still weird being able to just walk into Nate's office whenever I feel like it. While Mom worked a few years at Kadlec with an open door policy she and Dad spent the majority of their careers behind locked doors. So unless it was a special "Take Your Kid to Work Day" only those with appropriate badges were allowed to enter the building. So being able to get into Nate's domain whenever I want is still something I'm getting used to.

Once I said we were going to go see Daddy Abby was my happy girl, again.

When we got to Nate's office he grabbed her in one big hug then got a surprise as he discovered how sticky she was from the sucker! In an attempt to keep himself as clean as possible he fed her some M&Ms and got her on an even bigger sugar high.

Abby demonstrates her ability to shove as many M&Ms into her mouth as she can. She's got some "chubby bunny" cheeks.

After we left Nate's office, we joined Grandpa and Grandma Akers for dinner, then started to get in the car to go to Aunt Katie and Uncle Bo's house when Nate surprised us by arriving home early! (I give Nate props for understanding how important even the little family events are, especially when he's got a lot of work that he could be doing.) We got to Katie and Bo's and were joined by Bo's parents, sister, and two nieces. It quickly became apparent that this will be the last Halloween Abby and Haylee do together for a while. :-) Haylee is four years older than Abby (and only a year or so younger than Brooke's daughter Karcyn) so Abby was just too little to keep up with the fast girls. But we enjoyed the little bit of time we had together to trick-or-treat this time.

Abby as a butterfly and Haylee as a southern belle.

The first house the girls trick-or-treated at had a box of candy on the stoop for them to grab from. Abby kept trying to pick up the box and take handfuls of the candy, but was a very good girl when I told her she could only take two (per the sign).

Then we said our good-byes and headed back home where I took Abby across the street to visit our neighbor friends. She was so cute in that every time we walked up to the door and I told her to say "trick or treat" and hold her pumpkin out so she could get some candy she'd sit down on the ground and pull her candy out of her pumpkin as if to say "I've already got some, Mom!". Finally, we called it a night and went home to simply answer the door for our trick-or-treaters. Abby had a blast with this! Almost more-so than actually trick-or-treating. Every time the door would ring she'd start yelling "treat, treat" and race towards the door. She'd stop by the candy bowl until I'd picked it up and then continued on to the door so that she could pull it open. As soon as the door swung wide she'd yell "Hi" then wait quietly while I passed out the candy. Once the trick-or-treaters had started to walk back down our walkway she'd yell "Bye" and shut the door. Over and over she did this as each trick-or-treating group rung the doorbell. She was so cute to watch!!!

I think next year we'll most likely stay in our neighborhood and trick-or-treat a street or two then call it good. Our neighborhood really participates so even in visiting only a couple street's of houses she'll still get a decent stash of candy, and all the running around we did this year (while fun to visit everyone) was a little exhausting for me. :-)

A (final) view of our porch Halloween night. I love our little door friend! Pinterest had a link to a door monster but I didn't want to scare the little kids that live on our street so I made sure to make him smile so he looked friendly. :-) Hence, our door friend.