Halloween

Halloween is probably my least favorite holiday. I just don't get excited about it and I'm usually just happy to get it over with so I can get back to enjoying Fall. But the kids love it so I try to play along.

The girls had a book character parade at school on Halloween. Amelia went as Hermione from Harry Potter and Elsa went as Gabby from the Neverland Girls.

As soon as the girls got home from school, we raced to make dinner, eat, carve pumpkins, and get costumes on before it got dark. Ben's travel schedule for work has been crazy and he was out of town most evenings so pumpkin carving kept getting delayed. But mostly it was delayed because I kind of hate doing it.

Amelia dressed as Astrid from How to Train Your Dragon, Elsa was a witch, Oliver was an astronaut, and Simon was a monkey (and not a fan of his costume). He mostly just wanted to eat suckers. We went trick-or-treating in our neighborhood for the first time. We only have about 20 houses on our street and not that many kids so I wasn't even sure if people would be handing out candy. But almost everyone was home (or had left a bowl of candy on the porch) and gave the kids handfuls of candy since there weren't that many kids. One house even handed out the legendary full size candy bars. We enjoyed walking around on such a warm evening and despite there being only 20 houses, it still took us over an hour. Long driveways. The girls had fun sorting their candy at the end of the night (they had quite a big loot from the ward's trunk-or-treat earlier in the week too) and Amelia even made a list of her inventory.

Amelia hates, I mean REALLY hates, having her picture taken these days. But she loved posing in her costume so I had to take advantage. She also quickly made an axe all on her own while I was helping the others get into their costumes.

Halloween

Amelia decided very early on that she wanted to be a vampire/witch/black cat/bat. (She's really into the combination costumes. Last year she was a mermaid fairy.) On the actual day of Halloween, she didn't end up wearing her cat ears, tail or witch hat so she was pretty much just a vampire. Elsa was indecisive until a few days before Halloween. She finally decided on a vampire and luckily Target had one last vampire costume in stock. I pulled out the gnome costume and sock monkey costume from the costume box for Oliver and Simon. I was shocked that Oliver wore the hat and beard long enough for me to get some photos.

 

Simon refused to stop smiling so I refused to stop taking pictures.

The kids had a costume parade at school the day before (which Ben and I missed because we were closing on our house at the same time). We had a trunk-or-treat at the church the night before so we were already pretty well stocked for candy. We went trick-or-treating in Old Town with the Davis family on Halloween and it was super fun. I'm glad we experienced an Old Town Halloween before moving. They block off an entire street and everyone decorates their homes and they all sit out on their porches to hand out candy. It was fun to see so many different costumes and fun decorations.  (And I loved the chance to peak into some of the gorgeous homes in Old Town.) We made it home in time to hand out candy to lots of trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood.

Oliver gets really freaked out by new situations and people so it took him awhile to warm up to the crowds.

Senator Mark Warner goes all out decorating his courtyard. We took the kids back there and completely freaked them out. They had some pretty intense costumes (creepy clown) and a fog machine. I don't think my kids even made it to the candy. Amelia thought it was awesome. Oliver and Elsa cried.