Halloween Weekend 2020: 35 Hours without Power and Family Police Costumes

We just had a wonderful and much different Halloween weekend. Covid has caused life to look a little different, and while Halloween wasn’t completely normal–we made the best of it and made it as normal as possible (while being cautious).

Reid’s preschool was set to have a trunk or treat on Thursday for all the kids. We were setting up a Paw Patrol table, however, Thursday morning around 4:30 am, we lost power. The preschool lost power as well, so school/trunk or treating was canceled. They say “you plan, God laughs,” well, I planned for the days leading up to Halloween–and no power threw all my plans for a loop.

Thursday morning, we ventured to our neighbor’s house to get coffee (thank goodness for wonderful neighbors and their gas stove!). The kids got to play with their neighborhood friends in the morning which was an added treat for them. Following coffee, I took the boys on a walk around the neighborhood and to play on the swing set. We had peanut butter sandwiches, chips and canned chicken for lunch before ALL settling in for a nap. When you have no power–naps are a necessity haha!

Following nap time, we had a couple of our neighbors over for a drink and play time for the kids. When you have no power, you soak up all the daylight you can have. Around 6, it started getting dark so we headed to Los Bravos for dinner with our neighbors. It was packed as half of our town was without power–but SO grateful for wonderful, warm weather so we could sit on their front porch! We went straight to bed when we got home, as it was pitch black in our house.

We woke up on Friday to still NO power! The boys and I picked up Mom from the airport around 9am (thankful for a distraction from the lack of power). We went to Panera for coffee and Michael’s to get finishing touches on our costumes. Reid loves our family all dressing up for Halloween (read this post on our past family costumes). I thought I could avoid it this year (bad mom, I know ek!), but he started talking about his police “crew” so I knew I had to put on my Pinterest mom hat and make costumes for all.

Luckily, around 3 on Friday afternoon, we got our power back–I am telling you it was like Christmas morning! Not having power, definitely puts things in prospective for you 🙂

Halloween morning, Mom and I got our hair done together. It was fun having a little “self care” time with my mom. When we got home, I quickly started assembling our costumes and picking up before having a couple friends over to trick or treat. I usually purchase food and drinks a couple days before having people over, but since we didn’t have power it was a complete last minute thing. We grabbed a couple dips/chips from Trader Joe’s and ordered pizza from Papa John’s (please note: they have an adorable Jack o’ Lantern pizza for Halloween–ours didn’t look quite like it was supposed to, but still a cute concept!).

We had a couple people over for drinks and an early dinner, before heading over to our neighborhood clubhouse to meet up with more neighbors for trick or treating. Things looked a little different this year, aka lots of bowls set out, people wearing masks and hand sanitizer freely flowing–but it was fairly normal and I know the boys had a blast getting candy.

This was the first year, Reid (4) was able to run from house to house and was super excited about trick or treating. Walker (2) was into it a little bit, but wanted to be held for the majority of the time (which is totally fine with this mama). Reid is so sweet to his little brother and would pick out pieces to give to Walker and hold Walker’s hand up to different houses.

We had a great Halloween and love our neighborhood. I am so thankful to all of the participants in our neighborhood who put out candy and tried to make Halloween as normal as possible during this crazy year. I hope you had a wonderful Halloween, no matter what it looked like this year 🙂