Halloween!

Our ward had a super fun halloween party in a neighbors backyard a few days before halloween.  They had a chili contest, cornbread, scones, hotdogs, cotton candy, tons of fun booths for kids with prizes and a bounce house and haunted garage.  It was super fun!  Jon and I didn't dress up-which is not our style, but generally when we go to things like that most adults don't dress up and we just hadn't had time to think about it.  This was a time we wished we had because almost everyone was dressed up!  It was awesome!  We didn't recognize many of the people at first!  Anyway, the kids had a great time and it was really fun to see so many adults enjoying themselves as well!  Our kids were ecstatic to dress up, of course!  I had been super slacking on halloween and so focused on other things.  I realized a couple of days before this big party that I needed to figure out what we were doing for halloween.  Aubrey wanted to be Mario or Luigi.  Jonathan wanted to be pretty much any super hero.  Mariah wanted to be a scary guy, she called it, "the shadow", and wanted a black robe with a hood, and long white scary teeth.  Well, I thought we could at least run to Ross and/or some second-hand stores and find things we could turn into costumes.  So we went to Ross.  Right on the front store rack there was about 10 costumes.  In those costumes was a black robe with a hood and a bumblebee costume/mask-both superly cheap and the right sizes, amazing that out of the few that were there, we found exactly what we were looking for!  PERFECT!  We looked around for a costume for Aubrey and found some green pants--we figured we could make those into pants like Luigi.  We bought our stuff and left.  We hopped over to another store and saw a picture of Mario and Luigi and much to our surprise they both have blue overalls with colored shirts (we were thinking their overalls were the colored thing, not the shirts).  Then we saw a Mario costume for sale--not much more than the green pants.  I was sold.  We bought the costume, returned the pants and we were ready for halloween!  The kids were ecstatic and I really felt like it was a tender mercy that we were able to get exactly what they wanted for super cheap and in less than one hour!

We went to grab pumpkins on Monday night.  We went to a farm, picked them out, and headed home.  The kids drew their ideas on their pumpkins and we helped them carve them.  Aubrey did hers all on her own and we were way impressed!  Mariah, as usual was absolutely grossed out by the inside and wouldn't touch it.  We were mean and made her touch it though-ha ha.  They all turned out really cute!

On halloween night Amelia would not put on her costume.  She was so upset about it.  We gave her a sucker to sooth her while putting it on.  She was still pretty upset, but we wanted to give it a try.  At the first door she watched the other kids and followed them and was pretty pleased to get a piece of candy in the bag we had given her.  By the third door she loved her costume, was jumping up and down and beyond excited to be trick-or-treating!  It was really so adorable!  She would just jump up and down when people would put a piece of candy in her bag.  She even started saying "trick-or-treat" and "thank you".  It was really fun to trick-or-treat here.  So many of the neighbors were in groups in their drive-ways and had pot-luck and had made it a neighborhood party.  Then they would sit in chairs with their candy to hand out in one of their driveways while people came around.  It just was a really nice and fun atmosphere!  Plus we got SO SO much candy with the homes being so much closer together than in Utah!!  One house had candy dishes with skeletons or ghosts and whatnot on them.  When you would reach for candy, the skeleton/ghost, would snap down ou your hand.  It gave Mariah a really big scare!  She threw the candy she was grabbing really far and screamed.  The owner really got a kick out it, and so did we, actually!  Amelia was more fascinated with anyones pet dogs than candy if there was a dog around.  She would yell out, "goggie!!" and pet it and even let them lick her on the face!  She is for sure our animal lover!  It was really fun to go around together as a family!   It was really fun to see so many friends and neighbors out as well--just a fun night!  We all had a super fun time!