Year End Wrap Up - Part Un

Because you all have been so patient (and allowed me to continue my blog but privately) here is an extra long post for ya!  Since it's been, oh a good two plus months since my last post, I have a quite a few "firsts" to document.  So without further delay, Here!  We!  Go!  (Well with Part Un - oh and I'm being classy by counting in French, impressed?)

When last we visited, the Morgan family had kicked off several fun Halloween events but we had yet to make it to the first actual Halloween day.  Jim and I discussed the traditions that we wanted to establish for our family's Halloween and we decided kid-friendly Halloween movies (Charlie Brown and what Jim calls "Disney Halloween" - a compilation of cartoons that his family recorded from Disney Channel specials back in the 80s that his mom painstakingly transferred to DVD - they pretty much ROCK!), homemade chili, and carving pumpkins.  Of course when Clay gets older we'll do the trick-or-treating thing but until then, that stuff seemed good. 

We accomplished our goals:  I made a new chili (Cooking Light: Black Bean and Chorizo Chili)  it has a few surprises like melted semi sweet chocolate - sounds strange but it adds a little umph to the yum factor.

Jim carved pumpkins (not one, not two, but THREE pumpkins) and Clay touched the pumpkin guts and hung out in his excersaucer while watching us and the Halloween cartoons.

Jim getting ready to carve our "Gonzo" pumpkin.  You remember Gonzo from The Muppets, right?  Little blue guy with a thing for chickens?

Clay "loves his mummy" - I think this may be the only year when I can get away with that kind of verbiage on his shirt but.... we'll see!

Clay discovers pumpkin guts!

 We greeted trick-or-treaters (we had the pleasure of greeting one especially cute cow - aka Parker Musgrave).

Look at this cutie pie (Parker Musgrave) - cutest. cow. ever.

That being said, I looked at Jim at the end of the evening and said that was fun but...  I felt like we were so focused on making these great traditions that we put too much energy into these traditions in which (realistically) Clay didn't get to partake.  When in reality, he would have thought the day was much more fun if we'd just played with him all day.  With that being the start of the Fall/Winter Holidays I thought it was important lesson to take away.  So we kept that little nugget in mind when going forward in the holiday season.  I think it proved beneficial for our family of three AND I hope that we'll remember that lesson in years to come. 

Oh and yes, because it was decently warm on Halloween night and Clay wasn't actually trick-or-treating we decided to just dress him in his Halloween onesie rather than dress him up with the heavy monkey suit one more time.  I think it was a good choice!