Halloween 2011

We had a VERY happy Halloween weekend.  Friday night we went to church for Family Fun Night.  The whole family went dressed up in costume & Shaelyn's friend Veronica even came with us.  The kids had a GREAT time playing games, eating popcorn, decorating cookies, & receiving balloon animals.

Saturday we had Trunk or Treat at Banner Elementary School, where Brayden is now in afternoon Kindergarten and Shaelyn is in 3rd grade.

Sunday Greg & I saw the Musical Wicked at the Peoria Civic Center.  It was the best musical I have ever seen.  We have tried to see this in other cities and have even had tickets before but always end up moving before it comes.  After that we went home and loaded up the kids & our dog, Purdy, and drove to Washington to see some friends that we last saw when we were all living in Nashville, TN for CAT.

Halloween was on Monday this year so I had a blast helping out in Shaelyn's class for the Halloween party.  The hardest part was finding a snack that was gluten, soy, peanut & dairy free. It must have been a hit because one little boy told me it was the COOLEST party ever!

The kids came home from school & didn't want to take off the costumes.  They did immediately when they realized we were carving pumpkins.  We managed to get them carved 20 minutes before Trick or Treaters were at door.  Thankfully Halloween evening ended up being quite nice outside so the kids did the entire neighborhood in their costumes.  We even had 60 trick-or-treaters at our door.  One little trick or treater said our house smelled the best in the neighborhood. She said it smelled like smores. And another girl said it smelled like pumpkin pie.  Several of the moms later asked us what we did to make it smell so good outside our house?  Later that night in the dark we took a picture of our 3 pumpkins (since Greg and I shared a pumpkin = less to carve) we noticed the yummy smell was our little bat pumpkin with smoke coming out the top.