Halloween

The boys had a great time trick-or-treating this year. We went to my mom's for the weekend and had fun around her neighborhood. There were tons of kids out. Her neighborhood gets pretty into it so that made things fun. We went Disney this year: Jadon was Buzz Lightyear and Zachary was Peter Pan. I discovered that Peter Pan and Robin Hood essentially dress in the same garb. Really the only difference is in their weapon of choice. Something to think about if I ever get a chance to recycle the costume in the future. Nevertheless, the boys had a blast. Zachary was adorable walking around with his knee-high booties. Jadon sported some awesome blow-up wings. Here's to many fun Halloween's in the future!

So even though our trick-or-treating experience was more or less a success, I feel like I kind of dropped the ball this year for Halloween. Luckily the boys are still pretty young so hopefully they won't think of this year as a flop. Let's see how I'd fare if this were scored. We never made it out to the pumpkin patch which means we didn't even carve pumpkins this year (-10 points). Ed had a pumpkin carving contest with the youth in our church so he brought home one of the contestant's jack-o-lantern and we toasted pumpkin seeds (a little redemption with +5). Oops, we never managed to get out those Halloween decorations (-5 points). However, my mom sent us a fun little singing decoration from Hallmark as a birthday gift that we never put away (+2 points, thanks mom). We didn't pass out candy in our neighborhood because we were out of town (-5 points). Ed took the boys to a Halloween carnival at Jadon's school while I was in Minnesota (+5 points) but Jadon didn't wear his costume because we didn't have one yet (-2 points). And we did go to another Halloween carnival with my in-law's congregation (+ 5 points). And we did make quite a few mini-loaves of pumpkin spice bread so it has to count for something that our house smelled good (+5 points).

I was curious and added/subtracted all the points and as it turns out, I broke even. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here. Sometimes as a mom, I think it gets too easy to compare. If the reality of a situation is too far from our ideal, which is sometimes perfection, that's when the doubt creeps in. At that point, we might question our parenting performance. We might have negative thoughts, even thinking that maybe we weren't cut out to be a mom. It seems there are two solutions to combat the cycle. One, we spend every ounce of energy in an attempt to make certain we provide every experience possible for our child and make sure it lives up to our ideal, although this is still without guarantee. Or two, we change what our ideal is. Please don't interpret this as lowering our parenting standards. But when things don't go exactly as we planned, or maybe we just didn't find the time and energy to do every single holiday tradition or activity available to us (as in my case this Halloween), perhaps it is time to re-evaluate our ideal experience, the one we are trying to either create or replicate for our children. I don't know, my boys enjoyed their Halloween experience this year, they aren't complaining. So why am I beating myself up over not going the whole nine yards? There will always be things we don't come out on top of. So I suppose we choose to enjoy the chaos, enjoy the bliss, enjoy whatever comes our way. This is life.

Pictures are to come...as soon as I can find them!