Halloween

Camden has had a lot of firsts recently. He witnessed his first snowfall on Wednesday, has started reaching out and grabbing toys for the first time, and yesterday he experienced his first Halloween. I have to say, I wasn't really anticipating just how much fun it would be to have a baby on Halloween. I haven't really celebrated this "holiday" (if you can call it that) for many years now. As a child I would get dressed up and go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. I remember dumping all the candy out on the living room floor when we got home and trading all my chocolate for candy I actually liked from my sister. Then I would stash away my candy in my room, only allowing myself to have a piece once in a while, but never sharing with anyone else. I would usually be forced to throw it all away around Easter time when I realized it was too hard to eat anymore. (I've always been really good at saving things and not sharing - but I'm working on being a better sharer now that I'm older!). Here's a picture of Scott and his brothers from their childhood...






Scott and I have talked about how we're going to celebrate holidays now that we have a child in our lives. Are we going to let him dress up and trick-or-treat for Halloween? (We are, but we're going to limit his candy intake and keep our fingers crossed that he'll always want to dress up in cute costumes, rather than scary costumes...we don't like all the scary/evil parts of Halloween). Are we going to encourage a belief in Santa Clause or just focus on the true meaning of Christmas? Are we going to dye Easter eggs and have a Easter egg hunt even though eggs have nothing to do with Jesus' resurrection? We both agree that we want Camden to enjoy his childhood and we want to pass along all of the fun traditions we had with our families, while making sure that he is taught the real meaning behind these holidays as well.

Needless to say, we had a great time celebrating Halloween with our little one yesterday. Even though he will have no recollection of the day, I will always have fun memories of getting him dressed up in his little pea pod costume and joining the school's child care/pre-school kids on a little costume parade around town! It was adorable to see the kids treated to candy at the public library, the town hall offices, the little store in town, the doctor's office, and many of the buildings on our own campus. It made me so glad to live in a small town and see what a strong community we are raising our family in.

We even went trick-or-treating to a few houses with Camden's little friend, Jordan. (Camden is 12 weeks old today and Jordan is 3 weeks old today!) They're going to be little buddies!


We truly had a great day and it just got me so excited for all the incredible traditions and memories we are going to create in the future. We are so blessed.