Last night was Halloween—I hope all of you had fun and enjoyed the festivities. I know that my kids sure did! It was Elliot’s first Halloween, and he was tuckered out by all of the being carried around and making people smile.

Gracie had a good Halloween. She got TONS of candy; she will probably still have some until this time next year. She doesn’t really care for sweets too much—she likes them, but doesn’t go crazy on them.

Jackson also had fun. This was his first year trick-or-treating without us; he met up with one of his school friends and was on his own. Gasp! My little boy is not so little anymore. He also got TONS of candy, which will likely be gone by the end of the week. He loves all junk food, especially candy.

On the day before Halloween, we visited the local high school for their annual Trick-or-Treat Street, where groups of high schoolers decorate and staff candy tables for the area children. We’ve been to this event for the past few years. They always do a good job. This year, it was packed—there were two or three times more kids than there have been in the past. We waited in line for about 30 minutes before we could even enter the trick-or-treat area. Grace played with a cute little girl in line ahead of us while we waited.

Finally, we reached the start of the trick-or-treat maze. We walked through a set of double doors into a dimly lit hallway. There was a hopscotch game set up inside the doors, and the kids were supposed to jump through it to get the candy. But for Grace, the dim lighting took away her remaining vision, and she could not see anything at all. I explained to the girls at the table that she couldn’t see it, and they gave her a handful of candy. Grace insisted that she was fine and could walk without assistance, but she kept falling, landing hard on her knees. Each time, she’d get up with her usual chirp of “I’m fine!,” but eventually she allowed me to lead her. I held her under her arm throughout the rest of the building, leading her through hallways and corridors as she collected treats. Except for a scary moment on some stairs, and a difficult walk across a balance beam, Grace did really well in the low lighting. She ended up with about half of a pumpkin bucket’s worth of candy—not a bad haul for the day before Halloween! It was a fun family experience, despite the reminder of Grace’s visual limitations.

Grace’s visual impairments are easy to forget during our regular day-to-day lives; she does so well with them that you almost can’t tell she’s legally blind. But when the lights go down, so does her vision. All she can see in dim lighting is the lights themselves—and these appear very bright to her, so they don’t help illuminate the rest of the scenery.

Last night, I took the kids trick-or-treating while Chad stayed home and handed out candy. Gracie was in her stroller; between the vision impairments and her balance problems, it seemed like the best way to get her around. We would leave the stroller at the sidewalk while we went up to houses for candy.

Again, Gracie’s low vision was apparent. There were many times that she could not find her stroller at all, even when it was directly in front of her. I took to shining the flashlight on her stroller, but even then she couldn’t see it unless she was already looking at it. She is truly blind in the dark.

There was one time last night where I was trying to steer Grace away from some rose bushes. She cheerfully remarked that they were very pretty with the pumpkins on them—but the pumpkins she’d seen were not on the roses at all. They were solar powered pumpkin lights in little flower pots along the path. I shined the flashlight on the roses, but she still did not see them. It doesn’t seem to bother her—after all, she’s lived like this her entire life—but it is heartbreaking to me and Chad. It’s like a smack in the face to really be confronted with her limitations like this.

All in all, though, it was a very good night. She filled her pumpkin bucket (we had already removed the candy from the night before), and we came home when it became too heavy for her to continue to carry (even in the stroller). She had a blast both nights, and never was bothered by her own limitations.

One of the things that makes Grace so amazing is her attitude. She never lets anything get her down. She is the queen of adaptability—if something is in her way, she cheerfully changes course and moves on. While it was sad for me and Chad to again be confronted by the reality of her poor vision, she was not sad at all. To Grace, it was just a fun experience with family and costumes and candy.

And once again, I am reminded not of Gracie’s limitations, but of her amazingness. The world would be a better place if we were all so cheerful and unflappable as little miss Amazing Gracie.