Halloween 2011

So, Thanksgiving has come and gone and that can only mean one thing - time to post Halloween pictures!

Brianne had two costumes this year.  One was a present from Grandma Brindle - a pretty pretty pink princess gown.  My little girl is not only totally obsessed with the Disney Princesses, but much to my chagrin she LOVES the color pink.  Since we had a couple different Halloween things going on this year, Brianne wore her princess dress to the local library's toddler reading group party.  When she got to the library, the staff apparently took one look at her and said "huh?" because she acts nothing like a princess when she's there.  Not that she's bad, but from what Bev says she's just as ornery as all get out.

That night we went to another Halloween party, this time at the Gymboree Play & Music she goes to once a week during her "daddy/daughter time".  Since I knew she'd be climbing and crawling all over the place, the princess outfit just wouldn't do.  So we broke out the other one.

She loves this show on the Disney Channel called Jake and the Neverland Pirates and we've grown to loathe one episode in particular - The Pirate Princess.  There's a natural progression to your interest in things, and after you've watched the same 30 minute episode 20 times in a three day span and the lyrics to the princess song are stuck in your head, it's safe to say loathe.  So naturally, we went looking for a pirate outfit for her and found this one.  The sword was a little extra and did NOT go with us to the party or trick or treating.

Since Joe is usually the one that goes to Gymboree with Brianne, I'd forgotten the "no socks/shoes" policy for kids since they have large tumbling mats all over the place.  So, the shoes and stockings came off and she basically ran around in a t-shirt all night long.  Not that it bothered her at all, but every time she'd bend over to pick up a ball or crawl through something, I'd look at her bum hanging out and get a little embarrassed.  Oh well.

When Halloween finally came, it definitely turned into an adventurous night.  We don't have a lot of houses in our subdivision that hand out candy, so we decided to take Brianne to Bev's neighborhood so she could have some fun going trick or treating for the first time.  On the way there, we got caught in a traffic jam from an accident right at the road we needed to take.  The only other way to get there was to go all the way around the southern end of the city and come in from the other end of the road.  No short journey - about 45 minutes to back out and drop off.  Since we were going back by the house, Joe decided to stay home so we'd be one of the only houses handing out candy.

When we got there, Brianne was ready to go, she just didn't get what we were doing.  Amy, Bev's daughter and the one that first watched Brianne after I went back to work, is home from college until January so she came along.  It was nice to have the extra hand - Brianne loves her and that freed me up so I could take pictures.  It took a couple houses before she caught on to what was going on.  At one house, they showed Brianne the bowl of candy and instead of doing what any other kid would do, which is grab a handful of candy, she reached down and took just one.  We started to laugh and Brianne looked up and had this look on her face that said "What?".  By the end of the night we could get her to say "Treat" at the door.  She also loved all the neighborhood dogs she got to see

All in all, it turned out to be a pretty great weekend!  Not too shabby for the first year Brianne got to celebrate Halloween.