Better late than never...Halloween!

We carved pumpkins 2 weeks early. They were on sale. It isn't my favorite Halloween activity, so I thought we would get it out of the way. I know, I am no fun! I carved the twins' pumpkin for them. They thought it was pretty cool. Tyler did his own this year. All by himself. I thought he did a great job. Jake and my sister Krista have this drive every year to "one up" their pumpkins from the year before. This is what they got. Krista did the girl from Nightmare Before Christmas, and Jake's is just a little morbid. A man hanging from a tree in a graveyard. Yeah, I don't know!

Tyler and Ella had a hard time decided what they were going to dress up as this year. For school, Ty just went as a racecar driver. It was the easiest thing to do so he could wear it all day and not have to get stressed out about adding things in time for the parade. (That happened last year when he forgot to put his boxing gloves on.) The picture of Ty at the school parade is one of my favorite pictures of him EVER! It is so him! He is sensitive and wants to feel supported. He doesn't like feeling alone. So I watched him walk along the parade with a worried look on his face, trying to find us. It wasn't until this moment that he finally spotted us. I just happened to snap the camera at the right moment. It was awesome! He was so relieved to see us and was so happy!

We took the kids to IHOP for dinner. They were offering free "scary face" pancakes for the kids, so I wanted to take advantage of that. We don't go out very often, so this was a treat for them. They loved creating their own faces and then eating them.

Halloween night, (or I guess the Saturday before, since it fell on a Sunday this year) it was cloudy all day until 4 pm when the Trunk or Treat was starting. It started to pour rain! And it didn't let up until everyone was done for the night. Tyler decided he really wanted to be a robot. I think mostly because it was a project he could work on with his dad. Jake worked on Tyler's robot costumes most of the day. He finished right before we were supposed to leave for the church. We put Ty in it and then got out to the car...and didn't know how we were going to get him in. It was kinda funny. They had considered walking to the church, but because it was raining, it would have been a mess. So, we took him out of his costume and put him back in it when we got to the church. Cole knew he wanted to be a dinosaur. No problems there. Ella, oh I love her! She had the choice between 4 different princesses, a cute witch, or a cute pirate. Nope, no way! She wanted to be a dinosaur with Cole. We just went with it. Twin dino's...cute right? It was also the warmest costume, so it worked out well.

The Trunk or Treat was fun, but we only stayed for about 30 minutes. My kids don't do well in crowds. They get scared and want to cling to us. I don't blame them though. I would probably get scared in a sea of adults too if I were only 3 feet tall! We got some candy, and got the heck out of there!

When it was time to do some real trick or treating...Ella wasn't interested at all. She wanted to stay home and color. So, Jake was the candy-passer-outer and I went with the boys. Tyler was totally good with going to 10-12 houses. He was done and wanted to go home. Probably because it was really hard to walk in his costume. But, Cole threw the biggest fit when we headed back to the house! "I not done, I want more candy!" So we dropped Ty off and went back out. He went to 2 more houses and then he was good. Time to go home.

We let the kids eat as much candy as they wanted. They have one day of the year where that's okay. Have at it! Then after they came down off their sugar highs, it was off to bed.
A good night!