My Own Personal Minnie

Tonight we took Hannah and the kids to our local Easter Seals Halloween Festival.

We had been tentatively planning it for the past couple of weeks, and it was all contingent on whether or not Hannah would take her second nap in the afternoon.  The plan was to leave around 5 pm-ish, and Hannah crashed at 4 pm.   We thought we were going to have a great success, and hopefully she would nap for at least an hour or so.

15 minutes after she fell asleep, she was up and raring to play.   So the question was… “Do we go to the festival and risk Hannah having a meltdown when she gets too tired?”   We decided to risk it.

We ended up staying at the festival for a couple of hours, and Ethan and Abigail had a great time!  They did the festival games.  They did the trunk-to-trunk trick or treating (and came home with a stash of candy), and they even did the haunted house.  Hannah took in the sights, as there was nothing really for her age level, but it was so good to get her out and about.  I’m really glad we did it.

Towards the 2-hour mark, Hannah was really showing signs of being tired.  It was also getting cold out.  Once we got her settled into the car, she started having her tantrum meltdowns.  It always sucks when she does it in the car because she seems to hate being in the car these days, even with her Mickey Mouse DVDs.   We stopped once to grab fast food, and I was able to take her up to the front seat and cuddle her.  She was so tired, she was rolling her eyes and snuggling into me.  Of course, she never fell asleep.  The entire 15-minute ride home from there was rough, as there were quite a few times that she started with her breath-holding spells.  I held her hand most of the time, and I tried to sing and calm her down.

When we finally got home, and I put her on the floor in the family room, she was just a happy camper!

The kids spilled out their entire stash of candy and dug into it.  Hannah dug into it too!  Even though she can’t eat the candy itself, it did not stop her from chewing on all the wrappers.  She was so cute pulling out candy and munching on the wrapper.

Except for the car ride home, which we sort of had a feeling would happen (as she does not do well on car rides when she is tired), we had a fantastic family time tonight.  Just the five of us!  It also reminded me that I really should get involved with Easter Seals and see what they have available which may be of help to Hannah.

The Halloween festivities are not over by any means!   More halloween parties and events to come 🙂