Halloween Twenty-Fifteen

Now that it is almost Thanksgiving, I will finally get around to blogging about Halloween.  We did a few fun Halloween things, but I didn't seem to take pictures of all of them.  First of all, we made it up to the Pumpkin Walk on the Friday before Halloween, which is always fun:

 Arden liked the pumpkin that had a sun like the one in Rapunzel carved into it:

So many pumpkins!  We always love to see them all lit up, and it gives us good ideas about what we might want to carve our own pumpkins like.

 The next morning, the Saturday before Halloween, I ran the Haunted Half with my sister Val. It was cold at the start, but a beautiful, fun race.  I wore my Jessie-the-cowgirl shirt and some socks that were supposed to look like cowboy boots.  I braided my hair but there was no way I was going to try to wear a cowboy hat on my head for 13.1 miles.

 And have I mentioned that I like to run down canyons?  I do.  The medal was so fun too, his cape swung open and closed.

During October, we took the kids to see a couple of Halloween-y movies.  We saw Hotel Transylvania 2, which was fun.  We also saw "Goosebumps," which was only rated PG, but scared Arden and Cora.  Arden went to the bathroom two or three times during the movie, and her need to use the facilities seemed to coincide with the scarier parts of the show.  Hmmmm.  Dax ate it up though, and we all survived in the end.

Before we knew it, it was only a couple of days before Halloween and we still didn't have any pumpkins!  We finally got out to the pumpkin patch the day before Halloween.  I remember when all three kids would ride in the pumpkin wagon, but now my little guy is big enough to pull a wagon full of pumpkins all by himself!

The girls still like to ride though.  We each found ourselves a pumpkin, and the kids had fun running around the hay bale maze.

 This year they had painted one of their big farm machines like the one in the "Cars" movies.  Hilarious!

After a while, Cora got tired of the hay maze, and kept Preston and I company while we waited in line to check out.  Isn't she a cute little punkin?

We carved pumpkins all night on Friday night.  The kids were good helpers at scooping pumpkin guts, but everyone except Arden still wanted me to draw them a face and Preston to cut it out.  They told me what they wanted and I did my best.  Arden drew her face herself, but Preston was still a little uncomfortable letting her have a sharp knife, so he carved it for her.

Then, the big day was here!  Cora had her last fall soccer game that morning, no pictures.  Then it was time to dress up.  We headed north up to trick-or-treat at some Grandma's houses first.  When we got home from that I made them get their annual Halloween pictures.  Dax was a vampire this year.  Arden and Cora dressed up like characters from a Disney Channel movie called "The Descendants."  The show is about the children of famous Disney characters.  Cora dressed up as Mal, who is Maleficent's daughter, and Arden dressed up as Evie, daughter of the Evil Queen from Snow White.  I warned them that people who don't live with a 9-to-14 year old girl with the Disney Channel would probably not know who they were, but they didn't care.  They told people they were "rock stars" if they were unfamiliar with the show.  They were happy, and that makes me happy.

Here is them being silly, so pretty much as usual.

We even made Olive dress up, poor thing.  She was a skeleton.  We didn't make her keep the hood on for very long, but she didn't seem to mind the rest of it, so she wore it trick or treating.   The weather was really nice, and we went down the street to the neighbor's house to have some soup before the trick-or-treating started.  Preston takes the kids around, and I stay home and hand out the candy.

I did wear my Jessie hat on Halloween, but forgot to have anyone take a picture of me, so I took a selfie while everyone else was out trick or treating.  Best part of the picture is the awesome Frankensteins the kids did in Jodi's art class.  I love them!

I also took a picture of our jack-o-lantern masterpieces all lit up while the trick-or-treaters were at work:

Cora got tired of tricking and treating after about an hour, but Preston agreed to take Arden and Daxton back out for a little longer.  That little longer took almost two more hours.  They didn't get back until about 9:30, and they had so much candy they could hardly carry their bags anymore.  Cora helped me hand out treats, and we had a lot more trick-or-treaters than usual too.  It was a fun Halloween, and we are still eating the candy three weeks later.  (I'll be surprised if we get it all done by Christmas.)  It was a fun Halloween, now bring on Thanksgiving!