we had a Happy Halloween

My Halloween started on Thursday. I had a girl's night outing. "crazy Candace" down the street had us over for awhile then we all hopped in the back of a couple of pick-up trucks from the guys on the street that were filled with hay... for a hay-ride up to the square.

It was really fun! They dropped us off and us girls went on a ghost tour. We were pretty obnoxious, of course, and felt sort of bad for the others on tour -- but I think everyone had a good time. (Some of us stayed on the square for a few more hours at a local pub and walked home afterwards.)

Some people went all-out on the costumes. Mine not so much, but I was happy that I picked it up for under $4.00 at the Goodwill store -- a little straw hat and a stick horse... both of which can be passed down to Mercer to play with in a couple of years! I had boots on too and would "gallop" around making a clickity clackety noise.

Even though I didn't get much sleep, I got up (at a reasonable hour) and went to Mercer's daycare Friday morning. They had a little "party" in the toddler room and we went over / hung out while watching them make Halloween crafts. For Mercer and the other couple of infants -- there wasn't much they could do. The only "craft" that involved them was getting paint on their hands and making hand prints on a card. It was messy - of course - but cute. I also caught some video of him trying to crawl..... he's SO close!

I had my doctor's appointment Friday afternoon... and got the "6 week" ALL CLEAR. So, I can go back to normal ("ease" into things). I baked some witches finger cookies (but forgot the green dye so they look more like human fingers in a bowl.... ewwwww) THEN we started with Halloween festivities once Todd got home from work. Dressed Mercer in his costume and headed up to a neighbor's house for a kid's party. This annual kid's party is the real reason why we got the costume (we didn't take him trick-or-treating or anything). There are so many kids in our neighborhood. It is pretty cool to see all of them piled into one yard playing! We came back and passed out candy, glow bracelets, bubbles, and Halloween pencils -- which kids actually really like. We ran out of those before candy. The evening concluded with going to a bon-fire at a neighbor's house. It was a good day!

He slept in this morning and is taking a long nap today. Guess yesterday wore him out?

We caught some video of him this morning "crawling." It's a little bit of a scootch / an "army" style crawl on his belly -- but mostly his knees were under him and he moved forward a few steps. Yesterday, when we were at the kid's party, we ran into Henry and his parents (one of the February boys on our street). He's been crawling for awhile -- and his parents said it was "cool" the first day to see him crawl, but you get over it after the first day.

We know that crawling changes a lot. Todd's working on safety-proofing the house today. Outlet plugs / cabinet locks / safety gate at the step at the kitchen... I know there's more we should do. I suppose we just figure it out as we go along?!

We'll post some footage of crawling soon!