How Halloween Happened

Last week, Scotty was in Paraguay closing down the Asuncion temple for renovation. His trip spanned a handful of big events such as the primary program, Halloween, Zoe's birthday, and my speaking engagement.

Part of me was up to the challenge. The other part of me was an absolute wreck. 

There were some really terrible moments, but while in the midst of it, it felt so familiar that I wasn't sure if it was any worse than my normal day-to-day happenings. 

My biggest struggle was Halloween. I don't like Halloween, and since Halloween has escaped the 31st and spread its seed through the entire month of October, I was super uptight and stressed about Halloween festivities for weeks. 

On Halloween, as I was navigating a slew of negative emotions, I kept wondering, Why do I hate this so bad? What is it about Halloween that I dread so much?

Then I realized that it's not just Halloween. It's most holidays. 

I don't like holidays!!!

Before last week, I'd never acknowledged this. 

Do you know what this means? It means I'm a horrible, tradition-hating, miserable lump of a human being. People write books about folks like me! I'm the Grinch! Ebenezer Scrooge! Inspector Javert!

(Okay, so Javert's party-poopiness really isn't Christmas-related, but let me ask you this... would you want him at your holiday dinner?)

I thought deeply about this over the span of several days, and I think it's just a matter of holidays being too much. Too much candy, too much stuff, too many events, too many people. I feel like my life is completely out of control around holidays.

But I digress.

It's taken me a few days to get to the point where I can write a blog post about Halloween. I'm still in recovery.

Like I said, Scotty was gone for Halloween. And since I needed to have some control over my life, I wouldn't let anyone help me with Halloween. Three of my kids had a school parade first thing in the morning, so I had to have everyone up and costumed in time for school. After school I had to re-gather all of their costume pieces which they shed throughout the day and re-costume them.

By the time Halloween came, my kids had been the following:

Nicky: Colonel Sanders and a whoopie cushion

Daisy: a bat, a whoopie cushion, and Rainbow Dash

Zoe: Daisy Duck, a witch, Anna, a ballerina, a lady bug, Batman

Eva: a bat, Anna, a lady bug, and a frog

For official trick or treating, Nicky was Colonel Sanders, Daisy was Rainbow Dash, Zoe was a ballerina with a bow and arrow, and Eva refused to wear a costume.

I forced her into a frog costume for pictures. That went really well.

We went to my grandma's house, my mom's house, Scotty's mom's house, and two neighbors' houses. Then my kids decided that they had enough candy (HALLELUJAH! Seriously, though, they had about two five-gallon buckets of candy at home from all of the pre-Halloween events), so we went home. They were excited to pass out candy to trick or treaters, so I let them man the door while I made zombie brains for dinner. 

We ate the brains and watched a Halloween movie. Zoe snapped and was yelling and hitting everyone, so I put her to bed early. Everyone else was in bed by 9:00, and I breathed the biggest sigh of relief. 

It was over.

(Yesssss!)

{My costume}