Halloween with Valerie, age 2.8

We threw a Halloween party at our house this year on Friday night the 30th, and between Valerie's Halloween parade at her school Friday morning, our party Friday night, trick or treat in downtown Mountain View on Saturday afternoon and trick or treat on our street Saturday night, I'd say we definitely maxed out Halloween this year. We never did make it to a farm to pick out pumpkins, which I wish we had found time for. Valerie kept asking to... but oh well.... next year.

I went all out decorating the house for Halloween; we had cotton spiderwebs inside and outside, red "bloody" handprints on the front door, pumpkin/spider/skeleton lanterns, a black streamer spiderweb on the kitchen ceiling, candy corn lights and a costume gallery from years past on the fireplace, purple string lights along the kitchen counter, and some caution tape-style signs outside.

I loved Halloween decorations as a kid and then stopped caring about them as an adult, but now that Valerie is old enough to start enjoying them, I'm summoning the return of my enthusiasm. I even bought balloons after I realized they are pretty much the best toy ever at her Halloween parade/party at school Friday morning. She had a ball throwing a balloon in the air and catching it for like 20 minutes.

Since Valerie wore two princess costumes this year, Rapunzel on Friday and Sleeping Beauty on Saturday, Rich and I decided to coordinate with her and be the king and queen. We ordered costumes from Amazon at the last minute (standard operations in this family) and they turned out pretty well. The party was a good time; a lot of our friends from biodesign came, and Valerie's BFF Kalinda (dressed as the fairy godmother from Cinderella) and newborn baby Cole (in scrubs to match his dad the doctor) held down the baby-and-child front.  I mixed pitchers of sangria and lighthouse lemonade but most everyone just drank beer.

I got the lighthouse lemonade recipe from my friend Sarah - it is:

Ice
Deep Eddy lemon infused vodka  (1 oz)
St Germaine (1/2 oz)
Sour mix (splash)
Fill the rest with soda water (60%)

 It was as tasty as I expected and I ended up drinking probably most of the pitcher by the end of the night and was not feeling amazing Saturday morning. Whoops.

I chopped up shallots and garlic and cilantro in the guacamole; we had chips, salsa, and caramel apple nachos which looked fancy and were easy to assemble; monster munch popcorn with peanuts, Reeses pieces and candy corn coated with candy coating; Porcini and pumpkin ale mac and cheese for the entree, and banana "ghosts" (peeled bananas with three chocolate chips stuck on them as eyes and mouth) as well as s'moreo bars for dessert. I was also going to have clementine "pumpkins" but could not find clementines at the store so I got three navel oranges instead, which did not peel easily enough for me to make them look like pumpkins. Everything came out great, although I tried to melt white chocolate chips in the microwave for the white "drizzle" on the apple nachos and that was a total fail. It melted kind of clear and you couldn't see it on the apples. I'll have to get white candy coating for that next time. And also not make monster munch again because I ate far too much of that after there was a ton left over.

Halloween Saturday night was a HUGE success. We weren't sure what to expect because I couldn't find any official trick or treat times online, but our street was packed with trick or treaters between 6:30 and 7:30, and a lot of the houses on our street decorated and got really into it. I unfortunately wasn't prepared with enough candy - I had bought popcorn packs and ring pops to hand out, and we had a bunch of lollipops so I thought we'd be okay, but it was crazy.

 Our next door neighbor is an older woman, and her daughter Pam, who is probably in her 40s, came down for Halloween and decked out their yard with all sorts of crazy stuff (flying bat, talking skeletons, moving ghosts, etc) and dressed up as a witch in full green face paint. We went over there first, and Valerie talked to her for a while (and was terrified of all the moving/talking decorations) and the witch gave her a huge handful of candy. Then Valerie was officially obsessed with her. She wanted to stay at her house all night. We made her walk down the rest of the street trick or treating, and after each house she asked, "can I go back to the witch's house now? " So funny. I think she enjoyed trick or treating, but she mostly wanted to hang out at the witch's house all night.

getting candy from the witch

She still asks if the witch is there every time we walk by the house next door. This lady made quite an impression on her.

She was soooo cute trick or treating. She was a little shy, and couldn't remember in what order to say "trick or treat" and "thank you." At one house I said, "what do you say?" and she said "trick-or-treat-thank-you." Several times she said "thank you" when they opened the door, and then "trick or treat" at the end. Then around 7-7:15 she wanted to go home because her candy bag was getting too heavy for her to carry. She wasn't as intent to get as much candy as possible like I expected. So sweet.

We ended up giving out almost all of Valerie's candy to the later trick or treaters after she tapped out early. Luckily she didn't notice, so that actually worked out pretty well. She has a reasonable amount of candy left rather than a whole bag full. We let her have skittles, nerds and M&M's, and she was definitely on a sugar high. I've been trying to limit her to about 1-2 pieces of candy per day since then. She wakes up every morning and asks for a lollipop so I have to hold her off until after dinner. Lollipops are still her favorite candy, although she is yet to meet a candy she doesn't like.

I was surprised when I asked her what her favorite part of Halloween is, and she did not say candy - she said pumpkins. Then I asked what her second favorite part is? and she said spiderwebs. Then third favorite was spiders. So here I thought she would say candy or costumes, but she apparently likes pumpkins and spiderwebs. Haha.

Out of all the great memories, my favorite part about Halloween this year was the amazing warm California weather! We didn't even need jackets to trick or treat! 80 degrees on Halloween! I'll always remember it fondly.