"Tick Teet!"

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While I would love to live in area where it's possible to map out a vegan-only Halloween trick-or-treating route, we don't. And while I would love to just have an all-vegan kid Halloween party here, our friends with kids are spread too far apart. And since D~ can still down candy like he downs soda, he'll be getting all of J~'s candy this year anyway.

The Friday before Halloween, we went to my brother's and sister-in-law's place for his annual Halloween party. Now that he's a daddy himself, his parties are a bit more tame than they used to be. Most of the people there had kids in tow, and there was a DVD projector in the backyard playing "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" on the fence.

I made some butternut squash and leek soup and some yummy, fluffy pumpkin muffins, but I don't think more than one person tried either food. It was more of a snacking, grab-food-and-mingle type of party, so finger foods or sweets probably would have been a better choice if I had actually expected to take less stuff back home with us. D~ and A~ are usually awesome about making sure there's something there that J~ and I can eat at smaller, family gatherings, but this time I'm glad I brought what I did. D~ was making burgers and hot dogs and threw a portobello on the side for me and the little guy, but every other dish, side, and dessert there was filled or layered with one animal product or another.

At any rate, we had a good time. J~ enjoyed interacting with the other kids and especially getting tickled by one of the older boys as he (J) did laps around the living room. We spent most of the evening chasing after him and keeping an eye on him in and out of the house. They had a fire going in their fire pit, so we all sat out there for a while. J's really been into fire and candles lately, so he has pretty captivated with the flames. :P

Carbondale had their annual Halloween kid's festival and merchant trick-or-treating in one of the shopping plazas in town on Saturday. The papers apparently had the ending time wrong because the people managing the inflatables started letting all of the air out of them a good hour before we had expected. So, J~ didn't get to bounce around that afternoon, but he had a great time seeing all of the other kids in their costumes and walking around trying to figure out what trick-or-treating ("tick teet!") is all about.

On Sunday, we just went to the park and enjoyed the fresh air.


Not wanting to worry about the cold weather and having to walk and/or carry him from house-to-house, we just took him to the mall on Halloween night. It's funny... that's probably the busiest I've EVER seen our little mall. He did great walking around on his own, holding his pumpkin, saying "tick teet", and signing "thank you" for close to an hour, I'd say. We passed the little Science Center, and J almost had a full-blown meltdown when he couldn't pry the glass wall sections apart to get to the train table. He's never been there to play before, but he's played with train tables before. :P We stopped by and visited with D's dad afterwards, so Papa got to see him in his costume, too.

He was content to just play with the candy the next day - dumping it out of his pumpkin and stuffing it into the openings of his shape sorting toys. I had Dave pick up some Yummy Earth Organic lollipops, so he tried a few different flavors of those. I bought a couple of dark chocolate mini bars from Equal