Halloween

We got to celebrate Halloween in two parts this year. The Saturday after Juliette was born Steve took the kiddos to our church's Trunk or Treat while I stayed home with our newbie. It was also the annual church chili cookoff, which I was really sad to miss until a family from our church brought their chili to us for dinner! Hurrah! (And it was super yummy, too. Thanks Bennions!)

The kids reportedly had a great time, with lots and lots of running around, winning cupcakes, and candy-collecting. Thank you to those of you ladies who sent my children home with candy intended for me (Cami Fife, I'm looking at you and your Reese's cups). Gracie made sure I got a little chocolate fix as soon as she got home.

Gracie was "wedding Rapunzel" (she has been excited to dress up as this for months) and Charlie was a bulldozer. Steve whipped his costume up out of a cardboard box the morning of the party--the scoop part is attached to his trick-or-treat bucket! Genius.

I made a costume, too--just not for me. :) The Baileys wanted to get their Star Wars on, so Amanda asked me to draw a Death Star for her pregnant belly. I was pretty stoked with how it came out. And look how cute her little Darth Vader is!

(Sorry I posted you on my blog, Amanda, but you were a big part of my Halloween celebration--the only costume I actually participated in haha.)

And since Charlie's bulldozer costume wasn't built for travel, he re-donned his Kermit costume from last year for Halloween proper. He's got a lot more ankle showing this year. :) Grace got her gown back on, and Juliette was a delightfully sleepy, round, delicious pumpkin.

We packed the pumpkin in her carseat so we could stroller her around and took the kids up and down our street. (They had plenty of candy from Trunk or Treat, so we figured we'd keep it simple. Plus I had just had a baby, so moving wasn't really all that easy yet.)

Charlie didn't remember how it worked, so he kept ringing doorbells and then trying to go in to people's houses after they gave him a treat. At one point we told him to "say goodbye" so he would come back down and go to the next house, and he said goodbye to us. They also enjoyed our neighbor's haunted house, which was INCREDIBLY CREEPY. There were animatronic toddler-sized spiders and all kids of icky stuff. They just thought it was cool. We couldn't get Charlie to leave--I had to physically remove him.

Steve set up our pumpkins on the driveway, and they looked pretty awesome. We have, from left to right: Juliette's (carved by Steve) with the Mo Willems pigeon announcing "It's a Girl!", mine with a Hello Kitty bat as suggested by Gracie, Steve's which is Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc., Gracie's which is a Hello Kitty black Halloween cat (she was excited for us both to have Hello Kitty themes), and Charlie's (carved by Steve) Daniel Tiger pumpkin.

Juliette's:

Gracie's (which she mostly carved herself):

Charlie's:

Steve's:

Mine:

We let the kids stay up late watching Daniel Tiger and eating candy in their PJs so they could answer the door with us for a while. They raced to hand out candy anytime the doorbell rang. It was pretty adorable.

When we got their little sugar-high selves to bed, Steve and I got to our Halloween tradition: Chinese takeout and a scary movie. This year it was The House at the End of the Street and food from Sampan. This is actually one of my favorite Walton traditions, and we've done it since our very first Halloween when we lived in an apartment in San Diego and the only person who rang our doorbell was the Chinese food delivery guy. We paid him and gave him some candy. :)