Halloween

There is nothing more exciting for kids than free candy. We started our Halloween season with the ward party and Chili cook-off. We ate chili, played games, and started our collection of Halloween candy. I, of course, tried to sway the kids in the direction of the chocolate as they kept trying to take all of the lollipops. I was somewhat successful, but I still seem to have a lot of lollipops lying around the house.

The next item on our Halloween agenda was pumpkin carving. We only bought two pumpkins this year and named them Pete and George. One pumpkin for the girls, one for the boys. Dillon decided that the boys were going to make a happy pumpkin and Kelsey decided that the girls were going to make an angry pumpkin. As Doug and I proceeded to carve the pumpkins, the kids discovered that scooping out the guts was the best part and Dillon decided that his job was to separate the seeds from the goop. He was so cute about it and took it so seriously and decided that separating seeds would be a good job for Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs. Unfortunately we never got around to roasting the seeds, but he's had good practice for next year.

Finally, it was time for trick-or-treating. Each year we go over to our good friend's house and go trick-or-treating with their family. It makes the whole night so much more fun. First, we took pictures of the kids, and then we ate dinner, and then the dads took the kids out while the moms (and Tyler) stayed at the house to pass out candy.

It was such a wonderful night. The weather was perfect and so we just stayed in the front yard and let Tyler entertain us while we waited for the kids to get back. Tyler has truly developed a sense of what is funny and there is nothing he loves more than an audience. He was doing all of his tricks for anyone who was willing to watch and had a ball crawling all over the yard. Racing to the sidewalk and crawling through all of the mulch piles were his two favorite activities of the night.

When the kids got back to the house they were perfectly sugared-up and ready to top things off with a little hot chocolate. It was a fabulous Halloween.