The dream East Coast Halloween

-Photo bombing by the creepy fishing skeleton at the legendary Halloween house in our neighborhood-

I remember watching movies as a kid and always loving the fall colors depicted for Halloween. How cool is it to experience a full change of season!?! In California- it was beautiful weather- but everything pretty much stayed the same. I always wished for a colorful, crisp fall Halloween on the East Coast. And this year that's just what we got. 

It was Taryn's first official trick-or-treating experience. She held onto Tyson's hand the entire time as they walked door to door together. We picked a street just one block from us that was completely decorated for Halloween. It also happens to be the street where a ton of kids Taryn's age live. It was perfect. The day was beautiful- a bit overcast- creating that nice gloomy fall Halloween weather. The fall leaves of orange, red and yellow littered the streets, and I could here the crispy leaves crunching all day long as we ran our errands. 

We originally wanted to be Smore's as a family ...Taryn-marshmellow, Hadleigh-chocolate, Tys & Brianna- graham crackers. I even scouted out the perfect sized card board boxes on the side of the road on trash day for Tyson's tall body- stuffing them into my car at 9 months VERY pregnant... running into our friends bright and early in the morning... making quite the scene as people were on their way to work. 

Taryn recited "I be Marshmellow, Haddie be choc-o-late, Mommy & Daddy be cracker" over and over again. 

But about a week later I remembered I would be having a baby...and packing...and functioning in survival mode. Oh ya... so I scraped that because life was/is crazy. Then Taryn was a kitty for our church Halloween party. We were given the mask days prior and we could make it work. Then guilty mom set in and I felt bad that I was being so lame. So Halloween day I gave Taryn a few choices, completely willing to make her a Smore's all in one to make her happy (insert crazy Mom here.) We talked about her costume choices when she woke up from her nap and in the corner of my eye I saw her tutu. 

That's it!!! A fairy princess. 

She was sold and never looked back on the marshmallow. It took us 10 minutes to put her costume all together (a little make up, a tutu, a magic wand, a princess crown, sparkly shoes) and then she began to dance around like a little sugar plum fairy in the Nutcracker. Happy child.

It was a wonderful night of trick-or-treating. We were all happy and Hadleigh slept through the whole thing. By the time we had finished our one street, the rain started and we headed for home. Man, VA doesn't joke about their 20% chance of rain! But Taryn was done at that point which worked out perfectly and we had just seen our friends. We came home, Tyson and Taryn sorted through her candy,  and Brittany & Seth came over to see the fairy princess (who started bouncing off the walls like I've never seen before and she had only like 3 pieces of candy!!?!!)

I think Halloween has become way more fun now that Taryn understands everything about it a little more. And I loved watching Taryn & Tyson holding hands and enjoying the evening together, with Taryn singing a song we think she made up... 

"Trick or treat, it's gonna be fun!"