Halloween fun!

We had a lot of fun events around Halloween this year! The Friday before, our church did our annual Chili Cook-off and Trunk-or-Treat. There was lots of yummy food, as always, and Joshua especially loved seeing people with their cars and having them give him candy--pretty much the perfect night for him! I had to laugh because on Sunday morning as we were going through the parking lot to go into the church building, Joshua was pointing out different cars and telling me who they belonged to--he had remembered them from Friday night. He's a funny kid :)

On the afternoon of Halloween, our town hosted a city-wide trick-or-treat in one of the parks, where different companies, businesses, and community groups set up tables and handed out candy. There were so many people--definitely a successful event! Afterwards, we went to a local church's harvest festival; one of our neighbor's is a member of the church and was sweet enough to invite us. They had tons of games set up outside where the kids could earn candy, bounce houses, rock climbing walls, music, and so much free food--hot dogs, popcorn, cotton candy, drinks. It was quite the production and so fun! As we were coming into our neighborhood on our way home, I noticed that a lot of the houses on our street had their porch lights on to show that they were handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. Since we've been putting the kids to bed an hour later than usual this week in preparation for Daylight Savings (does anyone else dread the fall time change with little kids?!), we had another hour before bedtime and I decided to take Joshua out (Leah was DONE for the night so she was happy to play quietly at home with Daddy). BEST IDEA EVER! Trick-or-treating in our neighborhood was hands-down Joshua's favorite thing we did on Halloween! He thought it was so cool to be visiting our neighbors in the dark. He did a great job of knocking on doors and saying "Trick or Treat!" and "Thank you!" to our neighbors--who, by the way, hand out awesome candy! Everyone was so sweet and asked about my pregnancy and where Leah was and said how cute Joshua was. Besides being frightened by a few big dogs who came to the door, Joshua thought it was the coolest night ever--he's asked the past few nights if we can go again, and I've hated to tell him it is only one night a year that people expect you to show up at their door unannounced and are happy to give you free candy!

My parents insisted that I take pictures of the kids in their costumes on Halloween (my mom got each of their costumes for $5 at her local consignment store--woo hoo!)...and, of course, we didn't realize our camera battery was dead until we were already out and about! So I dressed the kids in their costumes again tonight so I could get a few pictures of them. Joshua is Plex (a robot) from Yo Gabba Gabba (one of the strangest kid shows EVER) and Leah is a devil princess (which, honestly, is about as close to her two-sided personality as you can get in costume-form!)