The first Halloween

It still amazes me that no matter how many times I have done something or experienced a certain holiday, experiencing it as Nicholas' first time brings on a whole new level of excitement.

This past weekend was a prime example.  Our time was filled with Halloween festivities that I have enjoyed before, but this year that holiday magic you believed in as a child seemed to be circling around.

First thing Saturday morning we headed out to the pumpkin patch.  At first I was a little worried, every time daddy would try to tell Nicholas that we were going to pick out pumpkins we got this face:

And then he would start to cry.

Why?  I have no idea, but he seemed to warm up to the idea after we got there.  Then, for some unknown reason, all of the pumpkins were hilarious.

He giggled and laughed at all of the pumpkins throughout the entire pumpkin patch.  The only catch, you could not put him down.  We tried numerous times to sit him on the hay bale or next to a pumpkin to take his picture but the screaming started before you even took your hands off of him.  Apparently, those pumpkins are only funny when daddy is holding you and you're safely out of their reach.

He kept a very watchful eye on those pumpkins.

So the pumpkin patch was not our most photogenic outing.  I was hoping the Halloween event hosted by the zoo would be different.  So Sunday evening we got Nicholas into his monkey costume (which he seemed to love by the way) and headed out.

He was all smiles at home.

Once we got to the zoo (they host an event for small children every year) he decided he wanted to be in an only slightly better mood than he was on Saturday.

There really wasn't any screaming, but you could not put him down to take a picture, you could not sit down while you were holding him and smile for the camera, yeah right!

I did manage to get a few pictures of my little monkey, unfortunately he doesn't always look pleased.

No matter what we tried, I could not get him to look at me or the camera.  The zoo event was sponsored by Target, so they had the white Target dog (the one with the bullseye around his eye) in costume ready to meet the kids.  Nicholas, on the other hand, felt that this costumed figure also needed to be watched, just in case he tried anything funny.

We met the characters from Madagascar and while he seemed to be a little more okay with them, I still couldn't get him to look at the camera.

The Madagascar penguins.  Yeah, he wasn't a fan.  About 2 seconds after snapping this pic he burst into tears.

Moving on, I tried one last time to get a good picture of him sticking his head through the cutouts of this Halloween picture.

I managed to snap this one before he tried to eat the wood.

At that point I pretty much gave up with the camera.  We went through the rest of the zoo and he seemed to do a whole lot better when there wasn't a camera pointed at his face.  So, who knows, maybe he just didn't feel like having his picture taken.

Oh well, I got a couple of good ones and good times were had by all.  Most of the time anyway.