Little Girl has been telling people she was going to be “Elmo” for Halloween since we bought her costume several weeks ago. And she was very excited to dress up for a photo shoot on Saturday (and she actually posed!)…

She was pretty determined to wear her Elmo bucket on her head rather than the Elmo hood on the costume…

Until I told her that she needed the bucket for the candy…

Monday, we discovered the pumpkin we had carved Friday was moldy. So Tuesday afternoon we stopped by the church and got one of the last five or so pumpkins they had left at the pumpkin patch. I thought it looked like a pirate.

I decided LG was old enough this year to enjoy crazy Halloween food, so last night we had “worms and fingers” for dinner. The worms were slices of hot dog and the fingers were cheese sticks with bits of green pepper for fingernails. LG was really excited to tell her Daddy we were having worms and fingers for dinner…lol!

Then it was time to go trick-or-treating…we started at Grandma’s house.

For some reason she kind of freaked out when we went to the door with the costume on…

She liked it better when she got to trick or treat to everyone in the house. Grandma gave her candy. Great Grandpa and Grandpa gave her money. Kid made out like a bandit, I tell ya!

Then Grandma and Daddy took her next door to trick or treat at the neighbor’s house. She was more interested in the dogs.

After that, we went to Rochelle’s house and then to their neighbor’s house. We called her godmother, but they weren’t home yet, and LG said she was ready to go home anyway. On the way home, we stopped by one of our neighbor’s houses who is the mom of a good friend.

By this time, LG was finally getting the idea of the whole “trick or treat”, get candy thing, and stopped being so shy. In fact, she was as charming as she could be when L invited us in for a few minutes. I know L enjoyed having her there since all of her grandchildren live out of state, and I was really glad that we could brighten her day a bit.

There are days when it’s hard to deal with an almost 3 year old with a mind of her own. And then there are the moments when she is sweet and charming and lights up the world around her. This was the first Halloween that she really “got” what was going on. And for me, this was the first Halloween in a really long time that I actually enjoyed myself, maybe even more than she did.

And as much as I rolled my eyes over the whole “Elmo” thing, she made a darn cute little Miss Elmo. I can’t wait to see what she chooses next year.