Costumes and Parties and Candy, Oh my!

I feel like I need a week to recover from all the festivities of this past week. We are having a quiet day at home since Allison is fighting off a cold and slight fever. My internet has been in and out all day but it seems to have been working for the past ten minutes so I'm going to try and attempt to write this post and get it up before it crashes again (have I mentioned how much I despise Comcast...but that's another story). My last post left off with my Moms club holiday party on Thursday evening. On Friday morning, Allison went to school and had a fun pumpkin day. Daniel doesn't normally attend school on Friday but they said he could come in for the parade and party. So I gathered up the troops (me, Jeff, Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Michael) and we all headed out to the big parade. As you know from the last post, Daniel was dressed up as Buzz Lightyear - his costume of choice for Halloween this year which my friend Karen was kind enough to let us borrow. Well, Friday morning Daniel decided he wasn't in a Buzz -worthy mood and he wanted to be a fireman. Lucky for me we had a fireman outfit (which was his Halloween costume last year). I wasn't going to argue with him, if he wanted to dress as a fireman for the school parade, then so be it. And here he is in all his glory:
Well, the morning didn't go quite as I would have hoped. In fact, it was quite disastrous, at first. For some reason, Daniel thought he was going to have to stay at school and that we were all going to leave him even though I explained to him about 50 times that we weren't leaving. He cried the minute we walked into his classroom (like he does on a normal school day) but since I wasn't leaving, he didn't stop crying (normally he stops right after I leave). I sat next to him and he eventually calmed down. Then all the adults were instructed to go on the playground and the kids would come parade around. Daniel was fine when I left but when he came out side for the parade there were once again tears in his poor droopy eyes. His teacher was holding his hand and he just looked miserable:
The kids walked around the playground about three times and each time he walked by he looked sadder and sadder until finally he ditched the parade of kids and clung to me. Then we all went back to his classroom for a party. Daniel didn't like that idea either. He kept crying "I want to go home!" I showed him the plate full of cookies, gummies and chips and convinced him it would be in his best interest to stay. Have you ever seen a more pathetic face:
Or a kid not enjoy a Halloween party as much as this one:
After a while he finally realized we weren't going to leave him and was able to enjoy the rest of his food with all his classmates:
That night we went to my moms house for a family gathering. The only pictures I managed to take were a few at the beginning of my sister and I and the kids:

The next day we visited Michael's brother and sister and law, their twin boys and the rest of his family. Once again, I failed in the picture taking department but I did manage to get one cute shot of Allison and Ayden (whose wearing his cousin Rebecca's shoes):
The next day was finally Halloween - thank goodness! We (meaning Bonnie and Michael) spent the morning carving pumpkins and then we went to hang out at the pool in my parents neighborhood. The kids had fun playing in the water with Uncle Michael and Papa:
After the pool we headed home to get ready for the evenings festivities. Our neighborhood had a pre trick-or-treating party at 5:30 and when it was time to get dressed for the party, I asked Daniel if he was ready to get into his Buzz Lightyear costume. His response "No, I want to be spiderman." Are you kidding me? Does he think he's at the Oscars or something with all these costume changes?? Luckily, once again, I happened to have a spiderman costume on hand. I tried a few times to convince him to dress as Buzz but he was quite insistent on being Spiderman, so Spiderman it was:
This costume choice actually turned out to be a good thing and I'll tell you why in a minute. Luckily Allison stuck with her original costume choice - Alice in Wonderland:
We all had fun at the party, Grandma and papa even joined us:
After the party, the boys hung out at home while Bonnie, me and my mom went trick-or-treating with the kids. We made it to about two house before being attacked by a swarm of mosquitos. Yes, here in Florida you need to prepare for such things on Halloween, and we had forgotten to do so. Luckily we were close to home so we darted inside and put on enough bug repellent to send the mosquitos to another state. Then we headed back outside. Allison rode her scooter while Daniel was chauffered around on his tricycle (it has a handle for mommy to push). After a couple houses, I was really impressed with how much Daniel had grasped the concept. I mean who wouldn't like to ring a doorbell and get candy, but you never know with my kid. He was even saying trick or treat and Happy Halloween to every house he went to, except for one when he came running down the driving yelling "I forgot to say something!" We were about 3/4 way through trick-or treating when the kids walked up a few steps to a neighbors house. After they were given their candy, Daniel managed to trip over something and took what seemed like a slow-motion tumble down the steps. Lucky for him, he was wearing a padded costume and managed to survive without any scrapes or bruises. He cried for a few minutes until the owner of the house came out and gave him more candy for his tumble. That made it all better. Go figure. After almost an hour of trick-or-treating the kids were done. I could tell Allison was tired and she said she was ready to go home. She woke up this morning with a fever but all in all I think they had a great Halloween. We love having Bonnie and Michael here to help celebrate with us. They are here until Wednesday when they will head to the Caribbean for a week for a vacation from their vacation. I might just have to hide in their suitcase...