Halloween

We love our neighborhood.

One of it's charms is Halloween, when the neighborhood has a party and as the sun begins to set all the children leave the party to go trick-or-treating together. They spread out as the hill our circle is on gets steeper, with the littler ones falling behind, but the whole thing is over by 7:30 and the candy mania is kept to a minimum. It's awesome. Tack on the fact that the fire department came last year with their fire engine and passed out candy and it was basically perfect.

The fireman's visit left such an impression on Jon that he's known what he wanted to be this year since July: "A firefighter, so when they come with their firetruck and give me candy I will be a firefighter like them."

So obviously Ben would be a dalmatian.

Jon was so sure he would see the firemen on Halloween that I dressed him up that afternoon and took him to the fire station, just to be sure since I knew they didn't go to every neighborhood every year. As we walked in the door to say "hi" to the volunteers on duty (they have an open door policy that any children can come and visit anytime they're not at a call), the fire chief walked past, saw Jon in his costume, and stopped to say hello to him. Jon was thrilled, and told the fire chief all about his costume: the walkie-talkie, the hatchet, and so on. The chief was so touched that Jon wanted to be a fireman for Halloween, and wanted to show the firemen, that he and another firefighter took Jon into the room with their gear, where he proceeded to put on all of his gear to be matching with J. Then he took him around to see the firetrucks and let him "drive" his favorite one.

And after I took a picture, they firemen pulled out their phones for a pic with Jon too. Then they filled all of his pockets with candy. And when I say all of his pockets, I mean all of them. And in a fireman costume, there are a lot.

Jon was so happy he could have been done with Halloween then and gone to bed completely satisfied. But we added trick-or-treating with all his neighbor friends, and it was basically a perfect day. One in which he went to bed a half hour after his usual bedtime.

I'm choosing to forget the fact that it was below 

freezing with a 30 mph wind the whole night.

It's days like these that I really, really, really love living in a small midwestern town.