Boo! Tyler's Halloween Fun

Fall is here! Get out your leafy pom poms!

Fall actually came to the south bay this year. The leaves turned brown and fell off and the temperatures dropped a whopping five degrees! We all dashed inside to make hot chocolate and stew as we threw on our sweaters and scarves! Tyler has loved the whole Halloween season. The neighbor across the street goes all out with the Halloween decorations so we go over and check out her spiders and skeletons all the time. We also have a book about a witch who plants a seed and grows a big pumpkin but can't get it off the vine so she enlists the help of a mummy, skeleton, vampire and bat. Tyler is constantly quoting his books, so my job is to figure out if he's saying "vampire" or "big tire." Sometimes it's hard to tell. But, he loves to pretend he's a ghost. Even when I get his shirt stuck on his head trying to take it off or on, once it's in place he'll say, "ghost!" like he was trying to be a ghost. Oh, and he'll try to scare you by saying, "Boo!" and will do it 200 times as long as he gets some sort of reaction out of you.

T chats with the neighbor...perhaps a little too long.

One of the traditions in our area is to go to Cottone and Son's Pumpkin Patch. They have sheep and pigs to feed, gobs of pumpkins, pony rides, monsters all over, hay everywhere, you get the drift. Last year Tyler screamed the whole time he was on the ponies (check the video of last year's blog, you'll see - not pretty), but this year he sat perfunctorily on his horse and just rode around in circles. For three bucks you'd think he'd at least crack a smile, but no, nothing, nada. He got a bigger kick out of running in the hay and feeding the pigs.

If you give a pig a pancake....

Yawn. Can I take a nap up here?

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Finally, after all this anticipation it was time to go trick-or-treating. Tyler was a very ferocious lion and he took his roaring quite seriously, I think his roar might have actually scared a fruit fly. But that's okay, I think he was going more towards the Alek-type lion in the movie Madagascar, since that's also something we quote on a daily basis. Regardless, I thought he was the cutest lion I had ever seen, and watching him parade around with his buddies to get stuff from the "candy guys" was a highlight of the season. He seriously was on a mission, even though he really wasn't sure what he was getting, he was going to get it and then some (he took at least two pieces of candy at each house).

Roar. No really, I mean it. Roar.

Tyler and his buddies all trick-or-treated along the walk streets of Manhattan Beach, where those folks take their Halloween quite seriously. This is the crowd pre-event. I didn't get a post-event because we were racing home to get T in bed by 9pm, but think discheveled, sugar-high, make-up everywhere, screaming banchees.

Can't exert ourselves pre-trick-or-treating, gotta catch a lift on the way to the fun!

Close to the last house, this lion needed to roll in the grass and take a little snooze.

Prior to Halloween, we had a few parties to go to but the Santa Ana winds made our area so stinking hot that there was no way I was putting him in his made-for-Colorado-Halloween outfit. So, I quickly came up with one that T seemed to like (because he was practically naked) and it got quite a few compliments.

Toga anyone? Where's the beer bong?

"Semi-obscene fireman and his hose" ran a close second to the toga, perhaps next year.

What better way to transition from Halloween than with pumpkin pie with whipped cream on it. As Clifford would say, that's a "tummy yummy!" Bring on the holidays!