"So am I the cutest little fish you've ever seen, or what?"

Chad's parents spend most of their summer at a place called, appropriately enough, The Summer Place. Come Labour Day, the park tends to clear out. I guess I knew before that the campground does a trick-or-treat night to mark the end of the official summer season, but just last week Dana mentioned that it happens on Labour Day weekend, making it - ack - September 1 this year.

Luckily, I start doing things for the holidays way, way in advance, and Halloween is no exception. I saw this fish costume at Babystyle (purveyors of the cutest baby costumes EVER) last year, and loved it, but it was too girly for Liam. Also, Babystyle doesn't ship to Canada. Enter eBay... a few weeks ago I found a brand new overstock costume, in package and with tags attached, for $9.99. I bought it on the spot. When Dana mentioned the trick-or-treat thing, I thought Mallory could make do with Liam's monkey costume from when he was a baby (to be listed on eBay shortly, but still in the closet for now)... and then Mallory's costume arrived unexpectedly early. Problem solved.

As for Liam, well, I managed to get him off the idea of being a frog this year, and for the past several weeks he's been saying he wants to be a fireman for Halloween. So a few days ago, Chad found him this costume at our local Value Village. And guess what? Liam looooooooooooves it. Success! So, we were all set for trick-or-treating.... even if it WAS two months early.

I honestly did not expect the park residents to go so all-out, but they did. Campsites were resplendent with graveyards and orange twinkle lights. Another surprise was how popular of a campground resident Liam has become. He has been out for a sleepover with Gramma and Grampa every other week for most of the summer, but I did not expect some of the residents to make up special little gift bags packed with treats just for him!

Liam, who had never trick-or-treated before, was initially a little apprehensive about the whole trick-or-treat
thing (he had never done it before), but he caught on really quickly... especially once he figured out that there was candy involved. We limited our outing to just a few trailers, and luckily he has some stuff that isn't crap (little cracker packs, Play Doh)... and, well, mom and dad are all too happy to help get rid of the stuff that is. :)

Now, it's just another two months until Halloween officially arrives. I think this warm-up session really helped him to make sense of things. Mallory is clueless, but I think she was a finalist in the Cutest Costume competition (I saw one of the judges singling her out to the other one). That's OK Mal, we'll get 'em next time. The big question now is, will Liam maintain an interest in being a fireman when Halloween finally does roll around? There were two kids in Spider Man costumes last night, and he was really smitten...