Our Dinosaur

Friends of mine have a daughter whose birthday is October 30th and for a few years now they have celebrated her birthday on Halloween with an evening party that ends in trick-or-treating. What a fun birthday! Cedric was very excited about the birthday party + trick-or-treating. He was ready to put his costume on and go as soon as he woke up from his nap.

By the way, he ended up being a dinosaur because in his words "Dinosaurs have bery loud teeth and go 'ROAR'!"

He had a great time at the party even though most of the children were older. They played a game where the kids popped balloons that were filled with pencils, tattoos, etc with a tack and Cedric was both fascinated and freaked out. My gentle giant still does not like load noises.

He did really well trick-or-treating too. I think next year we will work on a joke to tell. Its tradition here that after you say "trick-or-treat" you proceed to tell a joke before getting candy. A good joke should be handsomely rewarded. Its a St Louis thing and even though when we first moved here I thought it was odd, its really grown on me. Now I think its pretty cute.

Carving a Pumpkin

I honestly can't remember if we carved pumpkins on Cedric's first Halloween. I know Zach and I spent hours decorating spooky cupcakes for a party but honestly I was getting such little sleep then, its impressive I can remember that.

Last year we were more focused on teaching Cedric proper trick-or-treating technique. He wanted to go into every house. Going from house to house was exhausting and he only sort of understood that he was getting candy. It wasn't until we were home and opened some for him that he was really excited.

But this year he was much more aware of Halloween. He would get so excited when he saw a jack-o-lantern or notice the decorations at homes around the neighborhood. He was also really, really excited about getting candy. The conversation about what he wanted to dress up as for Halloween went something like this:

Me: Cedric what do you want to dress up as for Halloween?
C: Dress up?
Me: Yes, you dress up as something like a dinosaur and say "trick-or-treat" and people give you candy.
C: Candy!
Me: So what do you want to dress up as?
C: Candy.

We also carved a pumpkin this year. Husband is actually quite good at this. In our first few years together we would carve some elaborate pumpkins. This year we decided for a simpler, more classic pumpkin design.

Its important to be properly hydrated before carving.

Cedric wanted his dad to be very careful with the knife.


In his words "They are bery sharp and could take your hand right off!"
We take knife safety very seriously in this house.

He did not want to touch the insides of the pumpkin. But with the spoon did help clean it out.

Here is the finished product! The middle section was not structurally sound so it had to be reinforced with tooth picks, but I thought it turned out quite nice.

In case you can't tell, its a crescent moon with three bats.