I used to hate Halloween

It's just that once you're too old to go trick or treating, all the fun is gone and people just seem to try to make everything as disgusting as possible. And then you have a kid and BAM! Halloween is magical again.

This year we got to go to two trunk or treats. If you don't know what a trunk or treat is, it looks a little like this:

Kids go around to cars and get candy that way. It's much faster and requires much less exercise than going door to door.

The first trunk or treat was with my stay-at-home-moms' group. We met at a park and the kids played and then we had a potluck lunch. Hannah made some new friends.

And she really liked all the toys at the park. In this picture I'm standing on the ground underneath her and I'm looking up to take the picture

Absolutely terrifying. But I could not keep her away from that slide and I wasn't going to let her go down alone, so I had to keep sliding down with her. As I write this my hands are getting sweaty just remembering it.

Hannah didn't quite grasp the concept of trick or treating. She was more interested in the cars than the treats. Once, I wasn't paying enough attention and she climbed in the passenger seat of a stranger's car. Great.

She did much better trunk or treating later that night at church. Probably because by then she had a bright pink pumpkin head to put her candy in.

She did well. We definitely got better candy than we gave out. I've decided that this age is the best for Halloween -- she's old enough to walk and get her own candy, but not old enough to notice if we steal it from her.

After the trick or treating Chad and Ashley and baby Xavier came over and we had a great Halloween dinner. We had sloppy boos, (which are basically just sloppy joes with some pumpkin puree added in) and green pistachio pudding and a green witches brew drink.

Then we all fell asleep watching The Nightmare Before Christmas. I never could have imagined how great Halloween can be when you're a parent!