A Lucas Halloween!

Another Halloween has come and gone, and Lucas truly enjoyed it.

While this wasn’t Lucas’s first Halloween by any stretch of the imagination, it WAS his first where we took him trick-or-treating. In fact, he got to do it more than once. :-)

He actually had two costumes this year. The first was his actual trick-or-treating costume, where he wore a hard hat, orange vest, safety goggles, and toy tools so that he could be a construction worker. The other was his school costume, which was a t-shirt that looked like an airline pilot’s shirt and tie, and a airline pilot’s hat.

His first trick-or-treat was actually a “Trunk or Treat” on Sunday, put together by the church our friend Lindsey goes to. Jennifer and I took him there, while her parents and her parents’ friends from Michigan joined us there. Admittedly, I’m not that familiar with “Trunk or Treats” or how they operate, but I liked how this one was set up. Instead of going from car to car and simply getting candy, each trunk was set up as a carnival game like a bean bag toss or a bowling alley. Once you played the game, you got candy. Needless to say, Lucas had a blast playing the games, even if much of the time he needed Grandma’s help or simply walked up to the game and dropped the beanbags in instead of tossing them from a distance. :-)

We actually didn’t expect Halloween night itself to be that eventful. It’s rare for us to get trick-or-treaters, as far back as we are in our neighborhood and being in a cul-de-sac. Most years, I could count the number of trick-or-treaters we got on one hand. This year, however, we got more trick-or-treaters than we ever had before. Granted, the doorbell wasn’t ringing constantly, but it was more than we ever had. For his part, Lucas was a perfect host. He’d run to the door, say hi to people, and when they got their candy he would say, “Thank you! Happy Halloween! Bye bye!” I was proud that he was so outgoing, and several parents (and a few kids) remarked about how nice he was.

When it came time for him to do trick-or-treating, he decided he wanted to stay in his pilot’s outfit and not change into his construction worker outfit. We were okay with that; in retrospect, I think it was probably better because now we didn’t have to keep track of his toy tools in the dark. There weren’t very many houses with lights on on our street, so our choices were limited. The first house we went to was across the street from ours, where the homeowners had come outside to give out treats. We spoke with her briefly, and she gave Lucas a small bag of goodies.

The next house we went to was further down the street. We arrived as other trick-or-treaters were at the door getting candy. As we waited, we told Lucas that we were going to walk up and he should say, “Trick or treat!” When the other kids left, we walked up to their still-open door…

… and Lucas decided to barrel on in, right to their living room.

Horrified, Jennifer asked permission to go in, and went inside to go retrieve him, apologizing profusely as she did. She found him in their living room, already starting to play with their daughter’s toys. She picked him up, and carried him out. Admittedly, I wasn’t much help, simply because I was laughing too hard. Fortunately, the people who lived there not only weren’t offended, they were laughing harder than I was. :-)

In fact, after we took Lucas to two more houses (and we made sure to hold onto him at the door, just in case!), we happened to pass the daughter of the couple from that house as she was returning to her home, and she made a point to say that she had only just stopped laughing about it a few minutes previously. :-)

From there, we hit two more houses that had candy on tables outside their front door, and headed home. The second one was notable in that they had a “life size” inflatable Yoda holding the candy. Lucas knew who Yoda was, but something about the figure frightened him. I’m not sure if it was the sound of the compressor or his appearance, but Lucas was scared. I made a point to touch Yoda and show he was friendly, and even spoke as Yoda. I’m not sure he was convinced. :-)

Once we got home, we settled down and watched Sesame Street: A Magical Halloween Adventure on Amazon, pausing to greet the occasional trick-or-treater.

All in all, Lucas had a wonderful Halloween. He got candy from three trick-or-treating outings (the third was at his school), and got to be social with quite a few people. For my part, I think it’s been my favorite Halloween since I was a kid, if only because it’s a treat (no pun intended) seeing him experience it for the first time.

Here’s hoping he has as much fun with future Halloweens. :-)