Halloween...4 Days Long

The beginning of last week my kids were both pretty sick so I was nervous that we weren't going to be able to celebrate Halloween, which would have been really sad since we had so many fun things planned. Thankfully after priesthood blessings the kids showed almost immediate improvement and instead of no Halloween, we had a Halloween that lasted for 4 days, which I have now decided is a bit much.

It started off on Wednesday when we went to our library's Halloween Storybook Extravaganza. It was really cute, they song sangs, watched a couple quick cartoons, and read a couple stories, and then gave the kids apples (thankfully something not candy.) Had I known, we could have come in costumes but instead we were just in jeans and a t-shirt, probably a good thing.On Thursday the Indianapolis Zoo had ZooBoo, basically they had the whole zoo decorated, and then had a small section of the zoo sectioned off for trick-or-treating. A friend of mine had a bunch of free tickets that she was gracious enough to share, thanks Sara, so a big group of us took our dressed up kids. It took us about an hour to get up there, and once we did get there it was pretty wild, and I don't mean the animals. There were sooo many people. There were times when we wondered if the hour trip was worth it, especially since the trick-or-treating was really about 5 tables with people handing out one or two pieces of candy each. But after the dolphin show, and the zoo clearing out we had a fun time seeing the animals and just hanging out. Since we were pretty late getting back we stopped off at a Little Cesar's Pizza and had a quick bite to eat on the grass. The kids all seemed to have had a good time.

Trick-or-Treating

Cute girls!

Emma and Jenna, both cute kitties

Chowing down on yummy pizza.

On Friday we had our ward chili cook off/trunk-or-treat party. That makes for day #2 of costumes and getting candy. Once again there were tons of people, and lots of crazy energy going around. But it was fun, we always have a good time with our friends.

Our cute Superman

Emma was the same black cat last year, but after she saw the costume this year she decided she wanted to be a cat again... easy for me.

Yum-o

Finally we made it to October 31st!! That afternoon we finally got around to carving our pumpkin. Emma was all into drawing a fun face on it, and naming it Elmo, but as soon as we cut the top off and started to gut it out she wanted nothing to do with it. We tried to convince her of how fun it would be, but instead, it was just too gross and sticky for her so she went and played with her stickers while Michael and I carved it. Maybe next year she will want to help more. I always thought gutting it out was the best part. That evening we got together with some friends for a BBQ and then while the guys took the kids out trick-or-treating, the women all sat in camping chairs and handed out candy. Sadly we still ended up with a lot of left over candy, apparently there aren't too many kids in their neighborhood. Oh well we still had fun eating the candy, or leftovers from the BBQ, and just hanging out.

Deep concentration

All the pumpkins (Elmo is third from the right) and women handing out candy

So there was only a few noodles left of this delicious pesto salad, and I didn't want to use another fork, instead I used the serving spoon ...needless to say it was a bit big. :)

So in total my kids dressed up three times (Issac only twice) and by the third time Emma had enough. I was lucky to get her tail pinned on her and she wouldn't even let me touch her face to put on her nose and whiskers (although I can't blame her). With getting dressed up three times she also got to go trick-or-treating three times, which means a whole lot of candy!! Hopefully I can think of creative things to do with it, like Christmas advent calenders or something. I know eating all of it is a bad idea. :) I think we have had our fill of Halloween this year, and will see what next year has to bring us.