Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween everyone! I can't believe I am staying up on Halloween evening and posting these pics and blogging...perhaps it is the Dr. B (HEB's version of Dr. Pepper) and chocolate that I downed once we got back from trick-or-treating? Whatever, the reason...I wanted to go ahead and post so that I wouldn't let 3 weeks go by. That seems to be my m.o. these days -- if I let too much time pass I just put off writing about all the things that I really do want to share with you.

I was REALLY missing the Friendship Harvest Festival today -- we hadn't EVER taken the kids door to door trick-or-treating before and I was DREADING it! Let me explain - each year at the Harvest Festival we would participate in trunk-or-treating and have a pumpkin FULL of candy in maybe 15 minutes. This also means that in less than 15 minutes you hand out candy to over 200 kids...a little hectic, but over and done with quickly. Living in the 'holler' we hardly ever had a trick-or-treater...although we were ALWAYS prepared...even if that meant robbing from our pumpkins from the Harvest Festival (ha!...seriously!)...so we just never participated in Halloween trick-or-treating.....until now.

Tonight the kids put on their costumes and we hit the pavement with our cousins - Caitlin and Taylor...as two adorable Cinderellas....props to Gram who made the costumes! - Aunt Lisa, Uncle Dustin, Granny Gerry, and PopPop. Our street is only about half complete...there is A LOT of construction still to come and ongoing...however, the street over from us has been finished for several months and they were READY for trick-or-treaters. We joined up with some of our neighbors and had a posse of kids on a great sugar hunt....often ignoring the general 'if the light isn't on don't go up to the door' rule - oops!

Luke rode in his Radio Flyer wagon with Taylor...and the 'big' girls went from door to door to door. This year - Luke was a red M&M - thanks to my mom....and the Marshall's dept store where she spotted the costume. It had the funniest plastic hands that went with it...but you can imagine what it might have been like to try to get a 16 month old to keep them on! In case you can't imagine...you will notice that he ISN'T wearing them in the picture!

You will also see Summer as an adorable 50s girl - she was very accomodating to both me and my check book and was willing to revisit this costume from her Preschool sockhop days. It is finally a good length...it was always too long before! She had her Granny Gerry show her some 50s moves...I guess she is a method actress and had to truly get into character with some jitterbuggin'!

Then, there was my PopStar Diva. Kyla was ready to rock and roll! It took me a while to find a costume that was BOTH worthy of a PopStar Diva and what I deemed appropriate for an 8 year old, but I feel like we reached a GREAT compromise...all the nooks and crannies were covered! ha! She already had a wireless microphone from a previous trip to Libby Lu...it even matched the outfit! So we were Set!!

In less than an hour we had pumpkins FULL of candy and were ready to go home and begin to eat our stash. I love how I am calling it 'our' stash...but come on - if we are being honest then we ALL know that once the candy enters the house it is as much ours - the parent's - as it is theirs. Am I right here people? You KNOW I am! Well, the effects of the sugar/caffeine are beginning to wear off - hard! I am having trouble completing my thoughts...so instead of eating something else sweet - I better say, "Goodbye!"