My daughter's first halloween

I could rant about the sheer amount of robo-calls I'm getting from both major political parties leading up to Election day, or comment on how my grass is now blanketed with a thick layer of leaves, and there's still more to come, but instead I decide to talk about the year My daughter is old enough to wander the streets in her Piglet outfit gathering candy for looking cute.

Sara stayed home to give out candy (this will probably be the last year for that, as she only got like 2 groups in our area) so I took my friend who came down to visit. We walked in our cul-de-sac first to show her off. Daina and Sara both had been working on her to say Trick-or-treat, so she was decent at that. Later I found that she probably needed to know "Happy Halloween" too, but there's always next year.

Anyway, we walked from house to house, her one hand holding mine, the other clenched on a death grip to her pumpkin bucket. We hit sporadic houses in our area with the light on and door open (we hit one house that had the light on, but door closed. I thought "light on" was a sign for candy, but apparently you need both for it to count.) and one cul-de-sac that had pretty much all houses giving out candy. Then we hit the mother load:

One block up from our house the whole area went from sporadic houses with lights to a Halloween block party. This area was AWESOME!!!! The weather was nice enough for them to be on their porches giving out candy. Kids were everywhere running and screaming et. al. Houses were tremendously decorated, one so much put up a pulley system to move the ghosts around his built cemetary.
The routine became standard, I'd tell Nora to say Trick-or-Treat which she did to awws, then she'd get candy, then I'd tell her to say "Thank you" which she did, then I'd tell her to say "Good bye" which she did. As the night wore on, her reponses became less and less, as we started near 7pm, her bedtime.

Anyway, She let them drop stuff in her bucket until one man let her grab candy. This was her new favorite. She wanted to do this for every house afterwards. That was difficult in the Halloween block party, as kids (yes, the kids some kids stayed home with their folks to pass out candy! AWESOME again!!) would be overeager to give her candy. Confused yes, but she still liked it.

As she was dressed as piglet, we ran into Pooh and Tigger (another little girl and I belive her baby brother) Nora was happy to see Pooh, and said as much. Pooh's mom asked where we found Piglet, as he appears to be a hard find. (Daina found it on Ebay)

Another house awwed at my daughter, as they were informed by a gaggle of girls before us a "really cute piglet" was coming.

We eventually had to call a point to loop around (I thought it went to a T intersection, which we'd loop around there, but instead it was just a curve to the road) and then wandered back. Bless my little trooper of a girl, once we hit our home street she told me that she was "all done" and "finished" So i carried her into the house were we proceeded to have an overtired meltdown. that ended after the costume was removed and diaper changed, and quit all together once the pacifier was in her mouth. I'm fairly certain she was asleep before I even laid her down in her bed.

All in all I'd say it was a good first halloween. Next year, I plan on taking my wife with us to the halloween block party, cause I think by that time Nora will start having memories of these events :)