Halloween

We had a pretty good Halloween around these parts.  Here's a recap:

First up was the Trunk or Treat at the church.  Sadly, Natalie got the flu bug that was going around that morning so even though she was feeling better by the evening, she had to stay home.  Joe took her out for popsicles instead so I think that helped a little.

Here were the three that came along with me to the party:

We had fun getting to know more people in our ward and getting some candy.

Next came carving pumpkins for FHE.  We had Tom and Shari and kids over and had a blast carving and listening to Halloween music.  Here are all of our creations:

The kids and I took a trip to a local pumpkin patch one day after school.  It was a family farm run by some really nice people with some fun attractions.  The kids especially loved these slides:

I love these ones of the girls with Eli:

He looks scared in these, but he LOVED the slides.  We entered the corn maze where they had an even bigger slide:

Eli accidentally got sent down by himself one time and he still went back for more.

The straw maze is another story.  It started out pleasantly enough:

The older kids ditched us but I thought they'd be fine.  Eli and I ended up wandering around for a long time.  We finally ran into Elizabeth who wandered around with us.  I hadn't seen Natalie and Nate and I started to get worried about them.  We finally ended up crawling out through a hole in the hay, along with another poor mom who'd also been wandering around and who had 5-month old twin babies (along with 4 other kids) with her.  I helped her get her babies and toddler through the hole.  It was a nightmare!  At least we made it out alive. :)

Here's a happier moment from the pumpkin patch:

Next up was a Halloween party we got invited to by our bishop's wife.  I had no idea what to expect and it was unreal!  It was basically an authentic old-fashioned carnival, except with skeletons posed everywhere for a spooky effect.  Their barn was decked out with different activities in every stall, and they had a huge bonfire outside.  It was awesome and the kids all had a blast.  

Here's our photo booth pictures:

I dug out my old karate uniform for my costume.  I'm so creative. :)

I sneakily took some more pictures of the craziness that was this party.

The barn:

Elizabeth at the face painting station:

A couple of the posed skeletons..

This one was on a unicycle on a high wire with a spotlight on him:

The put an actual old piano in front of their barn:

Finally, the big day arrived.  They were excited to be out of school on Halloween because of parent-teacher conferences.  We hit the library and did a few other things to keep busy.  We had our traditional mummy dogs for dinner (I never remember to take pictures of those). Finally it was time to get in costumes:

That's Hermione, Ginny, Harry and a monkey.

We had our first experiment with hair dye.  We used some KoolAid to dye Natalie's hair.  We were so worried that it wouldn't come out, though, that we didn't leave it in very long.  I think it turned out alright--it gave a nice effect--and thankfully we got it all out the next day.

It was hard to capture the cuteness that was Eli trick-or-treating.  It was just so fun to watch him waddle from house to house.  I tried to get him to say thank you but he never would.  Instead he would wave at the people giving him candy.  They thought that was pretty cute so I guess it worked alright.

After taking Eli around our neighborhood, Marsha was nice enough to get him to bed while I took the older three to trick-or-treat with their cousins.  They loved that and got way too much candy, of course.  

Another Halloween is in the books!