Halloween

We had a lot of fun on Halloween. Luke had his party at school and enjoyed going trick-or-treating at Dean Lumber. He made an incredibly cute lion (I had forgotten he was also a lion for his first Halloween--whoops!).

When the kids got home from school, they put on their costumes and we went to a neighbor's house for another Halloween party. They had some fun games set up and lots and lots of good food. It was nice to do a potluck and not have to worry about dinner, particularly trying to make a creative Halloween dinner. I made deviled eggs with spooky olive spiders on them. They were good, but definitely not the highlight. My Australian neighbor made some delicious pavlova, which I had never had before. There was also pulled pork, corn dogs, chick-fil-a nuggets, chips and guacamole, and so much other food. One neighbor made amazing spooky chocolate covered pretzels. They actually had different colors worked in and I can't imagine the time involved. You can see where my head is at that I feel the need to list out the food and not specifically discuss anything else.

We left there just before 6 to prepare for trick-or-treating. As per tradition, Jennifer, Chris and Jacob joined us. We set out our candy bowl and walked the neighborhood. We brought Luke's umbrella stroller so he could easily climb in and out. However, he was not interested! He walked the entire neighborhood (just over a mile) without ever complaining or appearing the least bit tired. He loved going to each house and holding out his bag. He would proudly say, trick-or-treat, thank you and Happy Halloween to everyone who put something in his bag. He was adorable. After we finished at the last house, which was right next door to ours, he saw our house and said, "I'm ready to go home," which was good, because we had gone to every house! After eating a few pieces of candy, he enjoyed handing out candy to the people who rang our doorbell until we finally turned our light off at 8.  Let me say that trick-or-treaters get a bit more sketchy as the evening goes on. Right before I turned off our light, there were a few adults who didn't even bother with costumes. Not even teenagers. It was a little bizarre.

So Halloween was a massive success. It was the funnest Halloween I can remember. We did a lot of great activities and all our kids were totally into it. Kara was the only one who wanted to make her costume and she and I had a good time coming up with a plan and executing her "gumball machine" vision. We all had an afternoon of fun making haunted houses for our "Halloween Village" and we  carved some awesome pumpkins. Halloween may find itself rising close to the top of my favorite holidays list if we can roll this momentum into next year. Of course, Halloween has a short shelf-life, once the kids outgrow the activities, it will fall right back down the rung.

We actually had 6 carved pumpkins, one for each of us.