Best. Halloween. EVER.

It started in a typical way, on Friday, with the Simonds School costume parade. Lilah was Hermione, but she actually looks more like Ginnie Weasley. The costumes this year were very clever. Not so many scream faces, more original ones and a few Minecraft. I loved Mr. Stolz' "Uncle Fester" costume! And on Saturday, I saw a lady dressed as "Wednesday Addams".

I convinced Lilah to come with me to White River Junction for Halloween this year. The first time EVER, that we haven't decorated the house, or had to purchase 25 bags of candy. Our house is on a popular trick-or-treating route. I had heard that WRJ had an awesome parade as part of the GoryDaze celebration. Turned out - that wasn't an exaggeration.

We donned our costumes and ventured out in the dark to the Main Street Museum. A very strange place under normal conditions - the museum was even weirder with strobe lights, a band and tons of folks in cool costumes. We found our way out back where there were hula hoopers with flaming hoops and a Monster Petting Zoo!

It was almost hard to pull ourselves away when the parade started. We were shocked at the number of people waiting, the glowing butterfly puppets, and the floating lanterns (just like in the movie "Tangled"!) It was all so beautiful! But we didn't have a camera (no pockets) and we vowed we would draw pictures so we would remember everything forever. We spent a few hours this morning (Sunday) getting the best memories down on paper...

The kid is prolific and got three pictures done to my one - and she was great at remembering the colors of everything too.

Her memories.... The giant ghost puppets in the parade, feeding candy corns to the monster in the petting zoo, the fire hooper, the fire dancer (I touched the flames!! Brave me!), and the harp (inside of the piano) that we all threw pebbles at to make music.

It was quite a thrill walking around town, in the middle of the street, in the dark, with a horde of monsters... but the best part for Lilah was when she realized I'd given her the flashlight with the "cat toy" laser beam! She searched out any kids around her and teased them with the tiny red light. Amazingly - they ran in circles and tried to catch it - just like a cat would. By the end of the parade, she had even caught a few adults!

We met up with some of my classmates and got our copies of the Halloween comic book that Emily and Jake had assembled along with silkscreened goodie bags. It was very exciting since both Lilah and I had comics in the collection!

And here is my memory of last night- I put all my favorite things in one image: