Halloween...Finally

Here it is half way through November and I'm finally getting Halloween pictures posted. I figured with Thanksgiving and traveling coming up, I'd better not get too far behind, so here it is...

 

The girls had a fall festival at their school mid-October and they had really cute displays set up perfect for picture backdrops. I couldn't get Taryn to look at me though because she was trying to figure out the scratchy stuff I sat her on.

 

We went to the pumpkin patch with Tessa's Kindergarten class for their field trip and it was so much fun. There will be more pictures of this when I go over her Kindergarten year, but I wanted to at least add this one in an October post.

 

 During Conference weekend, we decorated our house for Halloween. The Dollar Store decorations from last year made a reappearance and we actually found a large spider this year to include in the web in the front yard. The blow-up spider we had from last year just wasn't cutting it for scary decorations that the girls were looking for.

 

 During Family Night we carved pumpkins, and I was so happy to just do regular jack-o-lantern faces this year. It was so much easier and faster than using the kits and stencils. The girls were able to help more and seriously we were done so fast. It was a lot of fun. It's definitely the way to go when you have kids helping. 

 

And here are the costumes for this year: Aubrey went as Rapunzel. She had the only handmade costume this year and it was a good thing because it was pretty involved. I refused to pay the thirty bucks to buy a cheap looking costume from the store when I knew I could make one that would look way better, but after buying all the material and accessories to do this dress, it cost a bit more, but I thought it looked a lot better too. Luckily Aubrey loved it and still wears it regularly and there's always Taryn in a couple years so I figured the dress will get its use. Too bad when we actually went trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, Aubrey refused to wear the hair, which was one of my favorite parts of the costume!

 

Abby went as a cowgirl and was happy with the outfit especially after she got her very first pair of cowboy boots, which she proceeded to wear to school about three times a week leading up to Halloween. I figured we've lived in Texas long enough, I guess we're pretty much Texans now that we own cowboy boots. Abby was also excited to find out that a couple of her friends from church were also dressing up as either cowgirls or Indian princesses, so that was fun for her. Tessa dressed up as a butterfly fairy this year. She was happy digging through the dress up box to create her costume. We got new leggings to keep her warm, so she was happy with something purchased, and we tried to find an antennae headband to complete the look, but ran out of time. With her cute face, I figured she could pull off any costume and look adorable.

 

With this being Taryn's first Halloween where we could actually dress her (she was about two weeks old last year), she had to wear the infamous monkey suit. Abby's babysitter from California made this costume for Abby's first Halloween and we've used it for every girl's first Halloween since. Unfortunately, Taryn had been under the weather due to her teeth coming in and it was already pretty warm weather, so the full suit didn't last longer than the first 10 minutes or so of the ward trunk or treat party. But she at least kept the head piece on through the trick-or-treating, which is the best part of the costume anyway. 

 

The ward trunk or treat and chili cookoff was a blast. There were so many people who came. The girls made out with way too much candy and they loved seeing everyone else's costumes.

 I was even able to grab a picture of a bunch of the girls in our ward in the back of my friend's truck as they checked out their goodies. 

 

Unfortunately, this was the last night we had Tyler with us for a couple days as he came home from this activity not feeling very well. He was under the weather for the next two days, then finally stayed home from work when it wasn't getting any better and went into the doctor only to find out that he had strep. Luckily, after two shots and some antibiotics, he finally started to feel better again. Sadly, he missed out on Halloween night and trick-or-treating around the neighborhood completely.

 

The girls and I went around with a neighbor and some other families we ran into from the ward, so we still had fun and loaded up their goodie baskets to overflowing. Aubrey even found this adult princess that she immediately ran up to and wanted to hold her hand. The lady was really nice and let me take a picture of them. Aubrey was sad I think that she couldn't continue with her new princess buddy, but she waved goodbye and was just so excited that she was able to meet a "real live princess!"

The girls were a little sad that we didn't get home early enough to continue handing out candy to people coming to our house (it was a school night), so after talking to some other friends I'm wondering if we shouldn't just bag the trick-or-treating next year, stay home, order pizza, and just pass out candy. We get plenty of candy at other activities and the kids really love passing out candy. It's an idea anyway. So our Halloween (and other October activities) were a fun way to start out the end of year holidays. We're looking forward to plenty more fun times with our ward family and friends and with our actual families as we travel and celebrate the upcoming holidays.