The Halloween celebrations of 2010

I don't know if it felt this way to any of you this year, but I felt like Halloween was NEVER going to end this year! We kicked the partying off the week before with a Halloween Carnival at the YMCA where my girls go to preschool. So we took our two awesome SUPER HEROES and our sweet little Skeleton and headed out for some fun! There were lots of kids and candy-good times!

Then on Tuesday before Halloween we had our ward Halloween party. It began with a lot of fun games, cookie decorating, etc., followed by some trick-or-treating in the classrooms. We got quite the stash of candy from this.

Then the girls each had a party at preschool. They were really fun...the kids got to dress up and do a parade/trick-or-treating through the YMCA, they had yummy treats and played games and made crafts(which are now displayed all over our home).

The day before Halloween we realized that we DIDN'T have Jack-o-Lanterns!!! What were we thinking!?!?!? So we loaded up the kids and took them to Clarks Pumpkin Patch. It was really fun, we've never picked our own pumpkins before. We hopped on a little hayride that took us out to the field and we carefully searched for just the right pumpkins. When we found them we put them in our wagon and took the hay ride back. We had so much fun! The girls thought it was so cool to pick their own pumpkins. Later that night we carved them while we watched "How to Train a Dragon." Emma wanted a happy girl-she wasn't satisfied with any of the patterns that Steve found on the internet so we just winged it. She wanted triangle eyes and a nose and just a smiley face. And of course-EYELASHES! :) Abi really loved the cyclopse pattern that Steve found so she wanted that one-also with EYELASHES of course!!! They turned out really cute!

Then finally, the grand finale-HALLOWEEN!!! It was on a SUnday, obviously, and no one out here did trick-or-treating on Saturday like in Utah. Well, I am not one to deny my kids-I know, I'm a sucker!, so we took 'em out for some fun. Jason and I stayed home to hand out candy since he woke up sounding like a barking seal-nasty cough. Steve took the girls to dinner and trick-or-treating with the Strongs-they had a GREAT time!!!

All in all, Halloween was really fun, but after dressing up the kids so much, FOUR!!! times trick-or-treating, and all the parties I am EXHAUSTED!!! (But we do have about 2 years worth of candy now:)