This Halloween brought to you by Travelocity

Another Halloween has come and gone. I never even found my box of Halloween decorations this year, despite searching the crawl space for it on three separate occasions. Bryce re-organized (I should just say organized, since there was no 're' involved) the crawl space and the Halloween decorations appear to have vanished in the process. Spooky.

Last Friday night was the ward Halloween party which Will was ridiculously excited for. He had a great time and wasn't at all enthused about trick-or-treating...he kept saying he wanted to go to the party again. He is all about the social scene.

Will wanted to be Indiana Jones for Halloween. I made trips to 3 stores and still hadn't even found a khaki shirt, much less a leather jacket, fedora, and pistol. I asked him what he wanted to be if he couldn't be Indiana Jones and he said "Nothing I guess. I'll just be like this." Talk about guilt. I gave a list of about 1000 suggestions and everything got "No. I'll just be like this I guess." Finally, I happened to mention a robot and he was very excited. He said "I will be a RED robot and next year I will be a BLUE robot!" So Wal-Mart pulled through with a pair of red sweats and a trip through the hardware, plumbing, and automotive sections. Very relieved to avoid the imminent Indiana Jones meltdown. (And thanks Lauren for the light belt idea!)

Sawyer was the Travelocity roaming gnome. Yes, I've been watching the Amazing Race lately. Sawyer walks with his gut stuck out--I guess as a counter-balance for his (no offense my cute baby!) head so he had the gnome gait down already. Bryce wanted to know why we were using our child to advertise for Travelocity...but they gave him a college scholarship so it was worth it. Just kidding. That would be awesome though.

I took Sawyer out the day after Halloween and took some pictures since I didn't get any good ones on Halloween. I still need to get a few better ones of Will in his costume. By the time Bryce was able to get home from work, Halloween night turned into a bit of a rush just to get the kids dressed and out trick-or-treating. The weather was spectacular. Who doesn't love trick-or-treating in short sleeves?! Of course, trick-or-treating isn't the same if you aren't in danger of catching hypothermia because heaven forbid you desecrate your costume with a jacket or some such nonsense. I thought this would be the year when Will really caught on to the true spirit of trick-or-treating = go as fast as you can to as many houses as you can to accumulate as much candy as you can. Instead each house was a fifteen minute process with an additional ten minutes if the kind homeowners offered to let him choose his own candy. At one point he was crawling between houses for unknown reasons. Then he went through a phase where he had to do somersaults across the lawn before ringing the doorbell. After about ten houses he wanted to be carried. Maybe next year. Sawyer kept falling over when he tried to walk on the grass so he got carried the whole way too.

My sister Mollie called me the day after Halloween to tell me that Macey's was selling off their remaining candy at a dollar a bag so I ended up with plenty to make up for the lack of candy present in Will's bag for me to steal. It is always best to know someone who will call you upon finding cheap chocolate.

Sawyer's 15 month check-up was also on Halloween. Stop counting on your fingers...it is true, he is actually more like 16 1/2 months. I had forgotten that they usually do a 15 month check-up until I read an old blog post that listed Will's 15 month stats. So I guess my blog has some purpose after all. Sawyer is moving up in the world...he went from 3rd percentile in weight to 7th. His weight holds steady at about average and his head circumference holds steady at the 75th percentile. No comment....(lots of brains).

After the doctor's appointment I went to vote. For some reason I was unusually optimistic about the ease of the voting process which is why I ended up in line with no strollers and two free range children. Sawyer was worn out from screaming after his shots so he just wanted to be held. Will actually did amazingly well until he found an open door to the parking lot. Luckily the person behind me held my spot about 8 million times while I went to retrieve him. Will wanted to know what voting was so I told him that we had to choose a new president to be in charge of the country. He didn't say anything more about it until an hour later when we were finally going back to the car. Will said, "Mom, I want to be a voter." I told him, "You can when you are 18." He said, "I would choose you Mom. I would choose Mom or Dad." Why thank you. He later amended his list of endorsed candidates to include Aunt Mollie. (Will just walked into our office and said "You are the best Mommy in the whole world"...I think his praise has something to do with the fact that we put him to bed 2 hours ago and he knows he isn't supposed to get out.)

After voting I tried to run to the grocery store. Both kids had had it by the time I went to check out leading to Will grabbing candy bars and then throwing a huge screaming clawing teeth-gnashing fit when I took it away and said I wasn't buying candy because he was going trick-or-treating in a few hours. He kept climbing out of the cart to grab more and meanwhile Sawyer had also discovered how to twist around and get out of his seatbelt and was doing his best to pitch himself headfirst on to the ground. When I strapped him in tighter he took out his anger by grabbing everything the (oblivious) clerk was loading in our cart and chucking it out. That kid can throw canned goods a surprising distance. It was one of those moments when you feel totally helpless...like an out-of-body experience where you hope some mom will come discipline these children that have somehow appeared in place of your own. In the middle of the tantrums the cashier says in monotone "How are you today?" Ummm...what does it look like!

I sent Will to time out the other day saying, "You hit your brother. You are having a time-out." To which he screamed "NOOO! LIAR!!!" Not sure where he picked up that latest bit of vocabulary. He is also in to saying that he "doesn't care." It usually goes like this: "Will you are having a time out for not listening when I asked you three times to stop hitting your brother on the head with the wet towel. We do not hit." Will then sits on the step screaming "I don't care Mom! Anybody doesn't care!" It also goes the other way: "I do not want to eat dinner Mom! I care!" There is a possibility that at one point, after the thousandth time that Will told me he didn't want to stay in his room for a time-out because it was no fun, I may have told him that I didn't care and he had to anyways. So now he is sure to let us know when he cares or does not care.

We cut Sawyer's hair for the first time today despite my many protests. Sniff. Bryce was armed and threatening to use the clippers so I wielded the comb and scissors and did it myself. Bye bye baby hair. It would have been gone before now, but I convinced Bryce we had to leave it long to add to the gnome effect for Halloween.