Halloween

I meant to post last night, but after a week FULL of Halloween activities, it was nice to sit and do "nothing" for a change. We had a great time celebrating, and loved having lots of activities to keep us busy, but are also ready to resume our more relaxed schedule...at least for a little while.

Our Halloween activities started on Monday night when we carved pumpkins as a family. I should clarify and say that we carved A pumpkin. We opted to let Makenna decorate her pumpkin with stickers and markers rather than carving it (although she was very interested in using all of the pumpkin carving tools). John isn't such a huge fan of the pumpkin-carving tradition, and I think would opt to use stickers and markers too if I would let him. Apparently he thinks gutting the pumpkins is gross, and that it smells; which may be true, but how can you not carve pumpkins??

Hudson seemed to agree with John about the pumpkin guts

On Thursday all of the older kids were out of school for Fall break, so we organized a little neighborhood Halloween carnival with a cake-walk, sugar cookie decorating, pumpkin paper craft, and donut-eating contest. It was rather chilly that day, but the kids didn't seem to mind too much, and enjoyed all of the activities.

Hudson loved dancing and clapping to the Halloween music with the kids

Decorating paper pumpkins
Us moms even got in on the donut-eating contest.

On Friday evening we attended the Kelley Kids Halloween party up on campus, and then on Saturday the party continued at our Ward's Chili pot luck, and trunk-or-treat activity. Makenna wanted to dress up as Dora for Halloween this year, so we decided to corrdinate our costumes as a family.

Makenna was Dora the Explorer. Hudson was Boots the monkey (Dora's best friend). John was Swiper the fox, and I was Abuela (Dora's Grandma).

The only people who really "got" our cosutmes without having to explain them were families with kids ranging from ages 2 to 5. In fact, John was quite a hit with the kids that age. At one point had a group of about 10 kids running around him trying to swipe his tail.


After our Ward's trunk-or-treat, we hurried home to do some trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. Even though the official Halloween trick-or-treating for Bloomington wasn't until Sunday evening, lots of our neighbors welcomed trick-or-treaters on Saturday night as well. Makenna had a blast, and of course ended up with way too much candy...oh well, I guess I will just have to help her eat it :)