Dear Great Pumpkin,

Happy Halloween!

I LOVE Halloween. I don't necessarily love it for the haunted houses or the sugar rush, but I do love it because it kicks off the Holiday season. This means that Thanksgiving is less than a month away, followed by Christmas, followed by New Years, One of the best times of the year in my book. Holidays always mean reuniting with family and friends. Love it.

While Michael is not old enough to enjoy the cavity-creating-satisfaction of a classic Halloween, he is old enough to sit through (or perhaps sleep through), "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!"

This is a tradition that started with my family. When Clark and I married, we finally gave into to buying the DVD our second Halloween together. A friend reminded me that we were at Blockbuster and it was Clark's idea to just buy it. He came up to me holding it with a big grin on his face, so excited he had found it for me.

As the years progressed, we added Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins to the tradition. My parents always got us the Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins for Halloween and Eggs for Easter. Clark was very happy to continue this tradition because he loves Reese's.

This year, we're adding one more.

While I've always been a fan of placing a pumpkin outside my door near my Welcome mat as a sign of my favorite season, we have yet to purchase one this year. Granted, we've been busy. So today we made it even more special and took Michael pumpkin picking at a local church's pumpkin patch on his first Halloween.




No, we're not going to carve it. Unfortunately we didn't plan that far ahead.As soon as Michael is old enough to remember,however, we will definitely be carving pumpkins for Halloween.

What are your Halloween traditions?