Connor's Plan for Halloween

He's 10 now, and it's taken a while to get him into the swing of this festivity. The first time we took him out to trick-or-treat, he walked right into some old guy's house as soon as the man opened the door! (because that's what you do when you ring the bell and visit someone, right?).

As soon as it became October this year, he was already excited about Halloween. He understands the calendar pretty well, so I could tell him it would be on the 31st, and he'd have to wait until then to trick-or-treat.

Figuring out what he wanted to dress as was a little more difficult. When I asked him about it earlier in the month, he said "knight" - or I thought he did. He said "night" meaning Halloween happens at night. Oh well.

So we went through a bunch of options - doctor, tiger, knight, etc. He came up with Cowboy Connor on his own (maybe because he was Cowboy Connor last year too?). I don't know, but we were set with that. One of the gals that substitutes for us at school brought in some real spurs that her daughter wore to barrel-race. He didn't wear those to school :P And to trick-or-treat, he needed a mustache - he got out the mascara on his own for that too.

Trevor stayed home to pass out candy. Well, the deal was he could have whatever was left. I think three kids made it all the way up our hill.... So Trevor got a lot of 3 Muskateers & Snickers.

As you can see below, we were assigned our pumpkin faces. We had no school for a Teacher Work day on the 31st, so in the afternoon, we took care of the pumpkin stuff. Then in the evening, we went to the Neewollah Parade downtown as usual. Connor clinked along in his spurs and a lot of folks noticed them :)

After the parade, Connor wanted to go door to door along the really decked-out houses on Douglas. These folks are in homes from the 30's & 40's, with switch-back stairs and big porches and lots of room to set tombstones, fog machines & all kinds of other decor. The fog kind of drifts down to the road to add to the creepiness. The people who live there are great about dressing up and it's a lot of fun :)

Then we had to find a train. Connor was talking about the train all day. I think he meant the little train we took at the Camp Millenium (for kids with cancer) fundraiser. However, that little amusement park (with leftover Santa's Village stuff, ironically) had already finished up last week - I don't think they realized everyone was off school on actual Halloween - doh.

However, we do have another family attraction - Wildlife Safari. For the second year, they have opened up on Halloween night to do various booths and fun stuff sponsored by banks & stuff from the area. And they have a train. It was $3 admission with a can of food for the food bank, and all the stuff inside was covered with admission.

We went straight to the train, of course. It's a pretty short ride, but it satisfied Connor's need for a train ride. He also got to decorate a cookie, I got the last caramel apple (yay!!) and we did the little trick-or-treat as well. There was a bounce house, and some games to play and you could see some of the animals as well in their enclosures.

Once we went through that stuff, Connor was ready to come home. Yay!