Did anyone else have a decent bit of anxiety surrounding Halloween 2020? No? Just me? Well, the reality of life right now is that nothing this past year has really gone according to plan. A lot of things have shifted and, with COVID cases on the rise and restrictions escalating again, we weren’t sure exactly what Halloween 2020 at JBLM was going to be like. A few weeks ago, JBLM announced its precautions and guidelines for October 31st, and most of it recommended contactless trick-or-treating, as well as avoiding large crowds whenever possible. I wanted so desperately to give my littles something real and normal in this time of craziness that I had a lot of anxiety.
But you know what? Halloween 2020 turned out to be one of our absolute favorites yet. This was our third Halloween at JBLM, and it was our second holiday living on post. We spent our first year trick-or-treating in DuPont, and Ryan had just returned in time for our first Halloween on post last year. After JBLM announced that trick-or-treating would be allowed from 6 – 8 PM, I knew we had to make the best of it no matter what.
The boys have been extremely particular about their Halloween costumes the last couple years, and this year was no exception. Spencer really wanted to be Sonic the Hedgehog. He’s been obsessed with running fast like him for a while, so we knew we’d have to make that happen. Porter wanted to be a dinosaur…an orange one. Porter is pretty particular about his likes and dislikes, so he selected his own costume, and he absolutely loved it. The hood gave him a little trouble, and he couldn’t really see that well, so we ended up removing it halfway through the evening, but it was a hit overall. Since Mieke’s too young to pick, it was my choice, and I decided she would be David Rose from Schitt’s Creek. The girl nailed it! She worked those glasses all evening, had zero qualms with walking for her own candy, and basically lived her best darn life ever.
I was interested to see how our fellow JBLM residents instituted their own contactless trick-or-treating. For our part, we stayed as close to the norm as possible, except Ryan wore medical gloves to hand out the candy (don’t worry – they were left over from when I had my PICC line), and he also wore his mask. That minimized the number of hands – and germs – in the candy bowl. Some of our other neighbors were more creative. One mama put a doll in her gas grill, as well as all the candy, and used grill tongs to place candy in kids’ baskets. Lots of people had individually-wrapped treat bags. One neighbor even used a garbage picker to hand out candy! Honestly, the kids didn’t even notice the difference, but we did, and that made it more special.
In a year of so much uncertainty, it was nice to have something fun and familiar, and I can’t stress enough how nice it was to see everyone band together to make something good like this happen – especially for the kids. Being able to trick-or-treat with them whilst wearing my mask felt, dare I say, almost normal? It was a wonderful experience. I put up a fun little reel on my Loving Life Moore instagram so you can check it out, too!
Tell me – did you celebrate Halloween this year? What was it like?
