halloween ’19!

you can call me queen beeeeee… aka. bee, queen of the hive? i was myself for halloween. and maddalena my sweet little princess honeybee!

and a couple of adorable dragons joined us!! rocco really had it in his head for a long while that he wanted to be a dragon. and you know what they say, two dragons are better than one!

stella is my favorite photobomber.

clearly, he needed, *needed!* a handful of bee antenna…

…i mean, honestly. haha.

oh, my babies!!! what a fun night for us all!

so, i’ve had a couple of thoughts this year… wait, sidenote before i continue: you really have to intentionally decide so many of your thoughts and intents as parents, right?! this is such a challenge sometimes!! although, i will say, i formulate opinions easily and with hurricane-strength force, so it’s not really that hard for me… but still. still!!

anyway, i’ve had some thoughts as the topic of halloween came up this year! now that we have one officially in school, there’s a bit more surrounding it! and i totally remember the same conjecture among parents when i was little, too. there are lots of opinions on how you should or shouldn’t go about it, and so many questions from my big kiddos as we pass by creepy decor and spooky store aisles and such!

really, it’s come pretty naturally over these last few years to conclude that simple is better for us when it comes to halloween! i don’t want to make it a big “thing” that we “celebrate” and spend a lot of money on… and i don’t want our children to expect anything more than that. i mean, when i was younger, we got creative for so many of our costumes! they weren’t all just pulled out of a bag [some were, some weren’t!], and my parents certainly didn’t blow the budget on it. aaand we definitely don’t celebrate it. i mean, obviously the origins are questionable, at best, so there’s nothing to celebrate! it’s a fun, chilly night for kids to dress up and get candy, just as it has been for years. i’m very wary of “darkness,” personally, but, at least around here, it remains a pretty innocuous occasion, i would say!

also, we really do love taking time out to greet our neighbors and let the kiddos do their thing on halloween night! they are hilarious and so, so cute! one of our neighbors even remembered that rocco, after receiving some candy and turning to leave, stopped and yelled back to him, “i’ll be back next year!” hahahaha. i had forgotten about that!! rocco always leads the way when it comes to trick or treating, and i love it. and no longer a newborn pumpkin, luca had his cold little fist just glued to his [candiless] bucket!! and maddalena was a graceful, happy little bee. honestly, costumes have been one of my very favorite things about their childhood. i could watch them prance around like that for days!

and my favorite tradition, besides all the festive pumpkin decorating leading up! is of course, a viewing of it’s the great pumpkin, charlie brown, which we did earlier in the week. and just yesterday, we just snagged an adorable little board book version of it with noise-making buttons and everything on the clearance aisle at homegoods! i swiped that thing up probably more for myself than anyone else, let’s be honest!

SO!!! there it is. another halloweeny success story of adorableness and weeks of sugar. 🙂

ps… a little video!! i’ve gotten really sick of having like 40 live photos and 10 sixty-second clips for everything we do, so. i’ve been consolidating!