Happy Halloween!

I love how with each year each holiday becomes more special with the kids. Stasa's really getting it and I love the anticipation that builds as each day passes. She's been so excited about Halloween and took forever just to pick her costume. She finally settled on Ariel, the Little Mermaid. No shock there really since that's her favorite Disney movie right now. Well, that and Monsters, Inc., but Sully and Mike weren't attractive costumes to her. Lexi was just excited because Stasa was excited. And now I can not wait for Christmas. Imagine that build up. AHHHH! It's going to be so much fun every year.

So. Back to Halloween. We started off a bit late with the decorations this year because we've just been so busy on the weekends and the weekends we had time it was gloomy and wet out. We finally decorated right before the hurricane only to bring everything back in, then put everything out again before we went out trick-or-treating. Talk about last minute, but it looks GOOD. I still need to go out and snap a few shots before we break it down. The girls even helped put some stuff out this year and had fun playing with the heads and rats.

We woke up last Saturday and Stasa asked for her face to be painted before we started with pumpkin carving. Easy request to fill and I turned her into a beautiful butterfly.


Then after breakfast we got started on carving up all of our pumpkins. We got Stasa started on cleaning out her pumpkin and baby's pumpkin. She surprised us with how well she cleaned them out and how patient she was making sure all of "the nuts" were out of both pumpkins.


Lexi saw what Stasa was doing and wanted in on the action. She climbed up in her seat and buckled herself in. I opened up her pumpkin and scraped all of the sides so all she had to do was pull the guts out. She stuck her hand in and immediately pulled it out, disgusted and scared. And then burst into tears.


She spent the rest of the pumpkin carving time like this.


Much happier.

Our pumpkins turned out looking good. Stasa requested a rainbow and butterfly on hers (well, honestly she requested Ariel, but didn't like my drawing so we scrapped that). Lexi kept yelling ELMO! so I went with that and didn't butcher his image too badly. And Tom and I stuck with traditional pumpkin faces for ours and new baby's.

Tom, Stasa, Lexi, new baby, mine


Lexi, Stasa, Tom, new baby, mine

I didn't get fantastic costume shots this year because we ended up rushing to get the girls fed and dressed and ready. By the time we got outside for pictures it was getting dark and I think most of my shots came out underexposed and grainy. I'll upload them later and add them to the post - at the very least I did do the unthinkable and got a couple with the on board flash because at the end of the day I just wanted to capture them. All that said, here's my grainy iPhone pic of Ariel and Elmo:


And here are the little trick-or-treaters with Daddy. Stasa remembered the drill from last year and had fun yelling out TRICK-OR-TREAT! but she did need a little reminding about saying thank you. She was so excited about showing us her candy she would forget her manners. Lexi was apprehensive at first, but after the first house it was like a light bulb went off and she thought "Candy for knocking on a door? I'm IN!" 


We hope everyone else had a fun Halloween!