Halloween has always been a fun time for my husband and myself because we love to dress up and go to parties. I was so excited when I had kids because I could get them to dress up and involve them in the fun.

The first five years: Boy doesn’t want to dress up. It lasts for about 10 minutes and then I give up and he wriggles out of his costumes.  Bribery with candy didn’t even work.

Last year:  Finally at age six, son is ready and willing to don the Halloween costume, so long as it involves a gun or weapon of some kind. The bad news is that my daughter is mimicking my son’s early years.  What makes it worse is that he tries to supervise her now.

As usual, we try a dress rehearsal for an early Halloween party to see how things go this year.  This is how it went.

The one thing they are polar opposites on is being scared by Halloween decorations. Yesterday, my daughter and I went to a Halloween store. She loved pushing the buttons to make the monsters turn on. She especially loved ‘Regan’ from The Exorcist whose head spun around  wearing a ‘dirty dress’.

We ended up leaving the Halloween store with the requested item from my son.  He wanted a large spider for our spiderweb outside.  I forgot to bring it inside, so I had him go get his ‘surprise’ from the car.  He freaked out and didn’t want to touch it.

Here’s hoping we see happy faces this year!