As a parent, I try really hard to not be the overly paranoid type, but taking my two year old out trick or treating on Halloween with all of the older {read: insanely obnoxious and rude} kids in our neighborhood kind of freaks me out. She's into it this year, though. Picked out her costume and everything! Who am I to stand in her way??
In comes the Jacksonville Zoo! We are pretty lucky to have a great zoo here. I mean, I know there are zoos all over the place, but this one is within short driving distance, and though I've never been to, say, the San Diego Zoo, I think ours is pretty nice. Anyway, they put on this big "Spooktacular" event every year for Halloween. Mitch and I took Sandra when she was about Sophi's age, so we thought it would be something The Sophster would enjoy. Not to mention, it was cheap! It was only $14 for all three of us to go. Thanks, Jax Zoo, you rock!
So we bought her a Minnie Mouse dress and some shoes, and I tried to burn my finger off making the ears. They came out great, though, and she loves them! She's also much cuter in them than I am.
We were so excited to find out that my little brother and nephew {Justin & Jaiden} and our good friends Tabatha, Adam, and baby Ezra would all be there, too!
Justin and Jaiden were dressed up like zombies. Their costumes were so great! Justin went to Goodwill and bought some clothes, cut them all to shreds and threw red acrylic paint all over them. Who knew my little brother was so crafty?! He also did their face paint, which was awesome!
The people at the zoo either loved them and wanted to take pictures with them or they were completely terrified. Justin stayed in zombie mode pretty much the whole time, which made things even better.
The Sophster was not a fan. She eventually warmed up to Jaiden, but wouldn't talk to Justin the whole night!
I'm pretty sure that Tabatha had a different costume picked out for baby Ezra, but he decided he was going to be a puppy for Halloween. Isn't he just the cutest puppy ever?!
The zoo had different themes as you walk through. There was Charlie Brown's pumpkin patch with probably 1,000 pumpkins all lit up along the pathway, characters dressed as Charlie Brown, Linus, and Snoopy. There was a Wizard of Oz theme with Dorothy's house, the yellow brick road, people dressed as Dorothy, The Scarecrow, The Tinman, and the Cowardly Lion. There was a Nightmare Before Christmas theme with Jack and Sally characters! I wish I had taken more pictures of the displays, but chasing after The Sophster the entire time led to not as many pics of much other than the children. But you guys love to see pics of my kid, right? I mean, I can't imagine you would be here otherwise!
Outside of the Range of the Jaguar, they had a DJ set up and the kids stopped to jump up on stage and bust some moves {aka burn some candy off}.
After shaking their groove thangs, we moved along to the carousel. This is always The Sophster's favorite part. She HAS to ride the merry-go-round every time we go to the zoo. Which is a lot.
After the carousel, things took a turn for the worse.
The zoo had "scare zones" set up throughout our path. You could choose to enter or bypass the scare zones. We bypassed all of them...until I thought "How bad could this really be??? It's for kids, right?" Wrong. I decided to hold {an already sleepy} Sophster and walk through the scare zone. Of course, it had to be zombies. She actually did ok until we were almost out. A zombie jumped out at us and she even startled me a bit, which really scared Soph. She started crying...and kept crying...for about 5 minutes. Saying she wanted to go home. It was around 9:00 by that time, which is past her bedtime, so we quickly made our way through the rest of the zoo and headed home.
Over all, we all had a great time at Spooktacular. I was so proud of The Sophster for getting through the whole thing and especially for actually going up the the candy stations and saying "trick-or-treat!". I thought for sure she would pull the shy card out on us, but she proved us wrong yet again! We've also decided to go ahead and take her out this Thursday for some trick-or-treating. We will go early and visit the houses of neighbors we know and we won't go too far from home. This has been the best Halloween yet for us, so far, and so we are all very excited about what's to come. :)
Have you done any pre-Halloween partying or trick-or-treating? What have you/your littles decided to dress up as this year? Will you be taking your children around on Halloween night for some tricks, treats, and boos?
Happy Halloween!
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