If your kids are Halloween-obsessed like mine, you know how lucky you are to live close to what may be the country's Halloween capital: Salem. Despite what you might have heard about "Witch City," it’s not all scary stuff. Many of the events happening in Salem in October are tailor-made for families, replacing most of the tricks with treats. There's a Wednesday program just for kids, and some old favorites have slowly become more fun than frightening over the years. If you've never done fall in Salem, it's time!

After welcoming my second baby, I wouldn't say I was feeling my best... A tough pregnancy had left me seriously out of shape, lifting my newborn and toddler was taking a major toll on my back, and let's just say the baby weight wasn't exactly "falling off." At 4-months-old, my little one was diagnosed with a milk protein allergy, which forced me to clean up my diet (no dairy or soy — yikes!), and it finally started to show on the scale. But when the ban was lifted 6 months later, cheese plates and pints of ice cream seemed like the obvious way to celebrate. It was right around then that I heard from obé, an at-home workout app and fitness program, and I figured it had to be a sign, right? I've never been much of a gym-goer, but their apartment-friendly signature 28-minute workouts required no equipment and looked manageable. I put down the mint chocolate chip and the heating pad and created an account.

Read on to find out how the obé fitness app actually got me working out, and why it seems like it was made for busy parents everywhere. Mommy Poppins readers can also snag their first month for just $1 with the code below.

This Halloween season, teens and tweens in the Philadelphia area have plenty of options for a spooky adventure. We’ve compiled a list of haunted houses, hotels and hospitals, ghost tours, zombie-filled amusement parks, horrifying hayrides, and creepy corn mazes. Older kids will encounter witches, werewolves, skeletons, bloody monsters, ghosts, and ghouls around every corner at many of these terrifying entertainment attractions. Most of these events are NOT recommended for children under the age of 12. Be sure to check each location's website for more info on dates and schedules. Enter if you dare!

Kids cannot live by Halloween alone—or can they? Just in case, we've included several events on our October GoList that are not about Halloween. Just to mix it up. Of course, if Halloween festivals, pumpkin patches, and corn mazes are what you're craving, they're with us all month long in abundance. Ghost trains, too. But with all the activities October has to offer, a little curating is definitely in order. Read on for our top choices of things not to miss in LA, Ventura, and OC this month. We'll keep adding to our calendar daily and sending our weekly newsletters, too; with so much going on, we'll have to!

Ah, October—one of the most beautiful months in Connecticut is also packed with fun events for families. Pumpkin patches, corn mazes, and apple picking orchards are all in full swing. Check out a Faerie Village, touch a truck (or sit in a cockpit), show off your costumes in a Halloween parade, or check out one of the many fall festivals happening across the state. Mommy Poppins' Fall Fun Guide offers up more ideas for harvest and farm activities, while our Halloween Guide is filled with both spooky and not-spooky-at-all events. Still craving more? Our event calendar includes even more great happenings all month long, and we're constantly adding things to do. Happy fall—and Halloween!

No parent likes to contemplate it, but the day will come for our kids when trick-or-treating is no more. If your family is as hooked on Halloween as ours is, you'll want to find a way to keep the magic going, even once your baby starts to look really big to other people (particularly people opening their doors at night). Filling this void is the main reason for the many seriously spooky big kid haunts around the Southland—haunts like Universal Horror Nights, Knott's Scary Farm, and Dark Harbor. But how to transition? You can't just hit the brakes on collecting candy with Elsa and suddenly start running from chainsaw wielding zombies.

The first time I visited this haunt, I had a theory that Dark Harbor at the Queen Mary might be the perfect tween transition to a different way of celebrating All Hallows' Eve, and I committed so fully to this theory that I booked our whole family (and some friends) for an overnight on the haunted, haunting ship. And guess what? It worked! Three tweens I know had the time of their lives screaming with the spooks all night at the Queen Mary. The evening was enormous fun, and I think a few things we did to prepare helped stack the deck in favor of success.

Halloween may be the star of the show this month, but there's plenty of other fun to be had in the days and weeks leading up to the big event. This month is jam-packed with fall fun, including harvest festivals and corn mazes, plus a kite festival and three-day street fair.

There are Halloween happenings aplenty, geared toward everyone from older kids to the littlest trick-or-treaters. Head down the shore for Boo at the Boardwalk, enjoy not-too-spooky fun at Goblins in the Garden in Camden, and don your black hat for Witch's Day Out in Smithville. Throughout the month, you can take the family for a ride on a Halloween train, check out a cool pumpkin display, and enjoy kid-friendly Halloween and fall fun at amusement parks like Diggerland and Storybook Land. 

Read on for more of the best events this October for NJ kids. For even more ideas, check out our list of 50 Things We Can't Wait To Do with NJ Kids This Fall, and find fun that's just right for little ones in our roundup of the Best Fall Events for NJ Preschoolers. Be sure to check our Event Calendar often for new happenings added daily. 

Get your calendars ready: Here are the top things to do with kids in New York City this October, many of which are FREE. Halloween may generate the hoopla, but there are plenty of other must-do activities this month, including a huge pumpkin display on Governors Island, the world's largest Lego art exhibit at the New York Hall of Science, and a tuneful celebration of Sesame Street's 50th anniversary.

The fall culture season kicks into high gear with amazing events and theater. Many annual seasonal favorites also take place in October, including the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine's blessing of the animals and the Little Red Lighthouse Festival—plus the return of Open House New York, which offers a peek inside buildings and sites citywide that are normally closed to the public.