Happy Halloween

Halloween this year was such a fun one! We did a lot of good things to get ready for it:

-I love this time of year as it's the start of my spooky movie season. I decided to put what I was watching or have a recommendation on my stories each night. It was fun (most of the time) finding a new one. A couple weeks I did a theme (90s, family, and Stephen King ones). 

My newest favorite one!

-We, of course, put up our decorations. Not all of them as Lucy got scared pretty easily with them, but we had a good amount up and the girls really got into putting up some bloody handprints on the window. We also had fun doing the countdown every day. Unfortunately, Pierce broke a huge chunk of the countdown one of the days, so I'll have to try and fix that (it's one I got at Disneyland many years ago so I love it), but otherwise no issues. I did end up finding the cutest little mummy cutout stand for pictures to put up, I was really hoping a lot of kids would want to take a silly picture. It was a little cold so Larry said only a couple kids did, but that's worth it enough for me (maybe more next year?)

-We went out in September to look at costumes at the Spirit store (that's where we learned Lucy is VERY terrified about a lot of the things for Halloween) and we found some really cute, fun ones for the kids. Then we went out in October to actually get them. Cara wanted to be a zombie nurse, Gwen wanted to be a Sally, but decided she wanted to be a zombie nurse too (my brother and I dressed as the same thing a couple Halloweens so it was kind of fun and funny that two of my girls did that). Lucy wanted to be a rainbow fairy. For Pierce, we found the cutest Ooggie Boogie costume that I knew he just HAD to be. When Gwen changed her mind on her costume, I decided to be Sally (I also decided I'm only doing a costume if it goes with someone else, otherwise I'm just sticking to one of my Halloween shirts). Larry had gotten a blow up costume of a man riding a snail early one so his was definitely the silliest. 

Cara loved being scary

While Lucy would NOT get further than this
From me and my face

-We definitely carved pumpkins. This was almost done last minute and I wasn't feeling up to roasting the seeds, this year, so it wasn't AS exciting, but it was still fun to do.

-We did our usual tradition of driving around to look at decorations and at the end the kids said that was their favorite part of the day and they love doing that. They didn't want to stop and wanted to go everywhere. I love that they like it so much. It was one of my favorite things as a kid and I love passing it down to them.

-The kids got to dress up for school. Unfortunately, Cara couldn't wear her zombie nurse costume because of the blood, so we were able to throw together a Misty from Pokemon costume for her (it actually turned out really cute). Gwen could wear hers, she didn't want to at the last minute, but I told her we didn't have any other options. Cara loved her Misty costume so much she decided to wear it for trick-or-treating. We were going to do another costume party this weekend that I told her she had to wear it for that, but then that got cancelled. Luckily, they both wore it at Legoland so we did get some use out of it, at least.

This isn't a costume, but I unintentionally 
Dressed him like Kreuger

-We got to do a LOT of extra trick or treating. There was Brick or Treat two nights at Legoland, we did our neighborhood trick or treating, AND Andy and Rachel invited us to their trunk or treat at their ward. So the kids LOADED up on candy (we even went around our block almost two full turns, normally we only do 1 so it was a ton more!). I actually learned, this year, that going zig zag up your street and around your block seems to be more effective. Normally we stay on our side of the street and do a "small circle" around our "block", but I told the girls we should start across the street and do the big circle and then when we hit our house, do the small circle. We did the big one about 1/3 of the way, and then started zig-zagging and I thought "man we should've done it this way the whole time." By the time we reached our home, the girls didn't want to do the houses we missed initially (in their defense it was really cold at this point). Either way, they loaded up, had fun, and they are happy with their holiday. They love coming back to hand out candy, start eating what they got, and get out of their costumes and into their cozy, warm pajamas.

Anyways, we had a great Halloween, I am very happy with how it turned out this year. I really need to stop planning vacations in October, it makes it so much more difficult to really get to everything we want to do. But I'm glad at the end of the day everyone was happy. Happy Halloween to anyone reading this! We hope you had a great holiday.