Halloween!

Growing up I hated Halloween....I never dressed up after like age 8 probably, I didn't go trick or treating after probably age 10, I hate being scared, I don't watch scary movies, I don't do Haunted Houses, I didn't get the hype. It always seemed like the dumbest holiday to celebrate.

Enter kids. 

It has to be one the greatest holidays now. But really, with kids, they are all awesome. But I have found myself actually looking forward to Halloween. And planning our costumes a year in advance. And not being able to decide on just one! It's terrible. But I have really come to appreciate Halloween. 

We kicked off the morning with some super delicious pumpkin pancakes. That then of course had to be cut into pumpkins, and ghosts, bats, and black cats. They were two thumbs up apparently. 

After breakfast we got all ready in our costumes and headed to my high school friend Emily's house to do carmel apples with some other friends. I had big plans to take pictures, but didn't realize until we were walking out the door that I never did. But it was really fun! There were 4 of us moms there and 11 kids between the 4 of us. So it was pretty much chaos, but fun chaos at that! 

My parents had to go to Manti for the state football game that Shayli was cheering at so they had to leave pretty early in the day. So unfortunately the girls didn't get to do their traditional trick or treat at Grandma's house. But they stopped by on their way out of town and gave them their little Halloween Packages. So the girls were happy. 

We left there and went straight home to each a quick lunch and sneak in a quick nap before heading to Jake's office for his work trick or treat. 

We made the rounds at the office and then headed back to Morgan for the business trick or treat! It's really fun. All of the businesses in Morgan are essentially on one long road. So they all participate and do fun things. A few got together this year and had a taco truck, last year they did nachos, the fast food place does ice cream cones, 7-11 gives slurpees, ACE did hotdogs, Pretzelmakers gives out coupons for free pretzels. It's fun. So we made the rounds on that with our favorite friends and neighbors the Rees'.

You can't see Emery behind Jake but her and Boston and holding hands ;) They are too cute. And I am so bummed that I didn't realize until late that night that I never got a picture of those two in their costumes!

Sweet baby Roman was a lion. Although he wasn't thrilled about that fact at times ;)

Emery, "Mom take a picture of all my candy!"

^^ What it is like with 3 kids 3 and under when you have to walk for semi-distances and they are tired....We have talked about getting the toddler attachment for this stroller and think we need it. 

 After the business trick or treat it was time to hit the neighborhood! The girls already had SO much candy so we only took them around our one little square block. They thought it was wonderful. 

About as good as a group picture gets sometimes. I am missing obviously...but I was wonder woman. I only wore my costume for part of the day though since I never really 100% finished it. Jake forgot to bring his shield into the picture too. 

Don't mind Macie spitting her binki out mid picture. She was a grump by the time this time of day came around. She usually getting in bed at 7, not being drug around the neighborhood!

Probably my favorite thing of the day was how Emery is CONSTANTLY watching out for Macie. Every single house we went to, person who gave her candy, or business we went to went like this...

Emery: "Trick or Treat"

They give her a piece of candy

Emery: "Can Macie have one too please?"

So they give her another one (sometimes very confused as to what she was saying)

Emery would immediately go to Macie in the stroller and put it in her bag. 

She is always watching out for Macie and making sure she never gets jipped. 

After that we came home and answered the door for trick or treaters and made our traditional Witches Brew. I had planned on doing some kind of Halloween dinner, but after our ice cream, hot dogs, and tacos, and the candy in between no one was hungry. So we drank a little Homemade Root Beer and called it good. Macie went to bed soon after, but Emery stayed up fairly late answering the door for the trick or treaters. She thought that was pretty cool. After she went to bed and the trick or treaters stopped Jake and I actually watched a scary movie. Shocking I know. But it actually wasn't too bad. I don't even remember what it was called, but it was scary without being evil, or gory. And suspenseful too. I still had my head covered for a lot of parts, but it wasn't too bad. I think it was called The House at the End of the Street, or something like that. 

Overall it was a great holiday! 

Halloween Festivities

Well now that Halloween is over I am finally getting around to blogging about all of the activities leading up to it! It has been chaos the past few weeks so it just hasn't happened. But I'm almost all caught up! These are in no particular order. In fact, I think they are in the exact opposite order that they should be in. But oh well. I lack any sort of motivation to fix it. So we'll start from the end and work our way back!

Oct. 30th. 

Every Wednesday and Thursday is story time at the library. And the week of Halloween they do the story time trick or treating. The library is right next to all of the city and county offices. So every one meets at the library and they read Halloween stories and then walk through the county and city buildings trick or treating. Lucky for the girls, that is where Grandma works, so they get to go trick or treat at her office. 

After trick or treating we went to lunch with grandma and then took grandpa lunch because he was home sick. And Emery said her final good byes to our pigs, they went to the butcher on Thursday. We are excited to get our freezer filled up though!

Oct 22nd

One of my very favorite Halloween (and Valentine's) traditions is decorating sugar cookies. And the little chef Emery loves it too so we made up some cookies and invited Boston and Larissa over to help us decorate them! Emery absolutely loves baking. She loves to help me bake anything. She got to roll out her own dough and cut them and put them on the sheet to bake. 

After they were cooled her and Boston each got their own to frost. 

And decorate...yowza! That is a decorated cookie! Turns out she only took one bite of it and was done...I even kept it for a day and she never went back to it so it went in the trash. Must've been too sweet even for her!

The finished product of Larissa and I's decorating. They were delivered to Visiting Teachee's and neighbors. The other half (not pictured) Jake took to work/

Oct 29th

I had been planning on painting pumpkins for a while, but something always came up in the evening and we never got to do it! I knew they girls had zero interest in carving a pumpkin...because they can't! We just end up doing it for them. So a couple nights before Halloween we finally broke out the paints and got busy. Emery made sure to paint every square inch of the pumpkin, while Macie did more self painting than pumpkin painting. 

Oct 26th

My mom had her annual Halloween party. We dipped carmel apples and carved pumpkins. I got one carved for Emery, and Jake started one for him. But that's as far as we got in between taking care of the kids and then needing to be home for bedtime. Emery's pumpkin ended up rotting before Hallween even hit anyway, LAME! We'll be more on the ball next year! Maybe...

Overall October was a success. I always have about 1 million things I want to do in October because it really is the best month. But we don't get to even half of them. Mostly because we've had babies in all of our Octobers! Soooo next year I'm planning some awesome stuff since they will all be relatively old. It's gonna be awesome. 

Frightmares

Aside from the gorgeous leaves and beautiful weather, one of the best parts of October in Utah is Frightmares. Truthfully, unless you go to the Haunted Houses (which we don't....) it isn't any different than regular Lagoon, except for it's much less busy! And the decorations and shows are all Halloweeny and fun! We've taken girls the past 2 years and loved it. I think it's going to officially be a tradition now. Emery loved it last year, but to say she loved it this year would be an understatement. She finally officially reached 36" (BARELY) She truthfully is probably still 35.5", but they still let her on the rides. Which I was really glad about. So she got to do a lot more than in the past. 

The first thing they ran to though was the Merry Go Round though, which there isn't a height requirement on. Emery loved it as usual, Macie not so much. She screamed on the first two things my mom put her on. So they ended up just sitting in this sleigh. She was much happier in there. 

The rest of the night we just bounced from ride to ride to ride letting Emery just choose what she wanted to do. 

Macie could do much, but she was content just walking around and being held. 

They did both get to do the Trick or Treating which they thought was pretty cool.

The highlight was Macie's night was the train ride. She loved having her own seat and watching all of the animals. 

This ride right here was the highlight of our night. It all started actually with the ride before this one. There are two rides that are almost identical, the LadyBug one and then this Dinosaur Egg one. One starts at the bottom and shoots you up and goes up and down, and the other starts at the top and drops you down fast and then goes up and down. Jake and I first took Emery on the LadyBug one thinking that it would end in tears and screaming. Because on the bigger adult version of these at Lagoo (The Rocket) I am TERRIFIED. But she LOVED it. I couldn't believe it. Even I was a little scared on it, but not her. She laughed through the whole thing and was so happy. So as soon as she got off she ran to papa and asked if he would take her on the egg one. And as you can see it did not disappoint ;) She told us as soon as we got in the car that night that she had a "perfect day". That makes it all worth it. She is the sweetest. 

Family Pictures Round 2