Halloween

Anyone that knows me knows I love Halloween.  After this year I can now add Halloween as one more reason to loving being a dad as well.  Last year we participated in Halloween while we visited Moab, but with Madeline not walking yet it was a pretty short evening of me carrying her around, and with her not eating candy yet we quit early after guilting ourselves about collecting candy that was obviously not meant for her consumption.
This year I wracked my brain for a good idea of a family theme for costumes.  I just couldn't come up with anything that felt right so I finally thought I would just give Madeline some options and let her choose.  Having recently moved to Maine I made one of the choices a lobster, and she decided that sounded pretty good.  It was easy enough for me to play along, I still have gear from when I commercial fished in Alaska so a lobsterman was a no-brainer.  Nicole isn't as much into Halloween so she decided to just be support crew and camera person.  I'm wondering if it had something to do with perusing the store-bought options for female adults and after rejecting sexy/slutty fisherman, sexy/slutty fish, sexy/slutty (insert any idea here) she just gave up.  If the choices I looked at are any indication of what females really want to dress like for Halloween, they could just change the name to Whoreoween and be done with it, but I digress.
I didn't really have the time or the facilities to make the costume for Madeline, but luckily enough we found one that turned out to fit great and look perfect.  I got a tip from co-workers that there is a section of Bar Harbor where they block off the streets and really do up the decorations for Halloween, so we had the makings of a plan.
We spent a bit of time at a farm stand down the road and picked out a pumpkin for each of us, and again I gave Madeline a couple of options for faces on hers.  She chose a traditional lack-o-lantern face, and I was a bit disappointed she passed on the Daniel Tiger idea, so I decided to challenge myself and use the idea for my pumpkin.  Nicole came up with a good scary face so we pretty much covered all the bases.
The day came, we spent part of the afternoon carving pumpkins, then made the drive over to Bar Harbor.  It turned out to be a good choice.  Lots of other kids, lots of decorations, and lots of friendly people really into socializing and having fun.  Madeline was a trooper and walked almost the whole time, finally pooping out at the end of the night and needing a carry just at the very end.  She started out shy when approaching each new house, but was very polite and said "tank you" to every person that gave her candy.  After a bit she got into it and starting saying "tic or teat" as she walked up to the house, and that quickly changed to the more pointed question "Candy?" each time we approached.  When you are two and shuffling up the front walk dressed as a lobster you can pretty much get away with anything.

On our way home we stopped by our library as they were giving away books for the kids, and then made a couple stops at houses in our neighborhood to meet the neighbors.  Overall it was a lot of fun and wrapped up with three tired people and a mountain of candy.  I hope everyone else had as good a day as we did.