Halloween

HALLOWEEN!!!!!

What a Halloween we had! The kids are all old enough to get really excited about everything so this was a very fun year. And they all picked pretty easy costumes so my life was a lot easier leading up to the big day. I feel like we totally covered the celebrating of Halloween this year - last Wednesday was the church Halloween party (my Young Women were in charge of a booth and it turned out great - we did a fun obstacle course), Thursday was the big school Fall Carnival and Reflections Open House (I somehow ended up calling to get volunteers for the event in the midst of everything else and then got stuck at the Pirates of the Carribean Slide for 2 hours or so, taking tickets and dealing with crazy kid pile ups when kids got scared at the top of the slide while Jared dealt with lost twins... the things I do!), Friday was Eliza's Joy School Halloween party, then Saturday was a fun adult Halloween party we put together for a bunch of friends, Monday was pumpkin carving, Tuesday was Liza's preschool Halloween Party (she has preschool AND Joy School this year) and our family Halloween story night, then Wednesday was the big day complete with taking treats to Jared's office, going to the Halloween Parade at the school, doing the Ivins Trunk or Treat and having a great time loading up the candy bags Trick or Treating in the Lanoue's neighborhood with them.

All the kids got really into doing pumpkins this year - nothing like
that feeling of squishy pumpkin innards between your fingers!

Great original designs - kids drew them out and Jared and I
helped them copy their designs exactly onto the pumpkins.
Order: Isaac's, Ashton's, Eliza's
Eliza with her Little Einstein's Preschool friends -
her best friend Olivia was pretty amazing Grinch!
Ashton at the Halloween Parade with Ricky, Avry and Lupe
Isaac with his class ready for the Parade

The twins were so cute in their bear and honey bee outfits. Silas was hilarious running around with this big old stinger wiggling around on his bum and his little tippy toed legs in their black tights looking very insect-like. Oliver was totally adorable in his bear costume and loved saying "grrrrr" to anyone who commented on his bear-ness. Liza skipped along from house to house and totally looked the part of a fairy. All day Tuesday, she kept saying, "Mom, I can't believe TOMORROW is really Halloween - I'm SO excited!" Ashton loved playing the part of the sneaky Ninja and Isaac was the cutest little happy pirate I've ever seen. The neighborhood where we trick or treated was a great area where they were giving out lots of candy and everyone was very pleased with their haul. Our kids and their friends Blake and Kinley were so cute running house to house, helping the twins along (and helping Si get up again and again - he could't see that well with his bee hood and kept falling over and spilling his candy everywhere - but he didn't complain a bit - just worried that all the candy made it back into his pumpkin bucket!). We've got some big kids now!

Here we are in our last-minute pretty lame
Halloween costumes - a bee and a flower - at least we tried!
Jared made almost as cute a bee as Silas. We had a great time playing games and marveling at all the great costumes our friends came up with at our party Saturday night.

To break up the Halloween events, I went to Vegas on Friday to meet up with Mom and Dad who were there for a speech and took them to the huge furniture market there to look at rugs for the new house. We found a gorgeous one that just might work! Jo drove to Vegas with me since he needed to pick up a car there and it was great to have time with him and with Mom and Dad. Plus it was nice to get a break from the kids and leave them with a babysitter for most of the day - sometimes a day away does wonders. I had a chance to have dinner with Mom and Dad in Vegas before hitting Trader Joes and heading home - such a treat to have the two of them to myself for a bit! What wonderful parents we have.

Now - to get caught up on laundry and put away Halloween stuff and clean this dirty dirty house...