Happy Halloween!

Happy belated Halloween! Wasn't the weather so nice? I recall many a Halloween growing-up when the weather was rainy and cold, which presented an interesting challenge when you are dressed as a punk rocker with spray color in your hair. We had actually gone to my mom's the weekend before to take the girls in their costumes to do some pre-trick-or-treating. What were the girls you might ask? Kaylee decided to be Batman, yes Batman. That's typical Kaylee if she likes it she likes it, gender is not an issue for her. She loves everything from princesses to Scooby-Doo to Batman. The costume choice is definitely more interesting when they get to pick their own. Kaylee had thought Ainsley should be Robin, which makes sense, however Ainsley is still young enough to not have as much of a preference so she was a Ladybug, which is a costume we had from Kaylee when she was Ainsley's age.

Before we got to the big night we needed to carve our pumpkins! We did this one night the week of Halloween. Here are the girls ready to turn the pumpkins into Jack-O-Lanterns.

Ainsley enjoyed playing with the top of her pumpkin. She liked to take it off and put it back on and so on and so forth.


Kaylee getting all of the seeds out. She was all about rolling up her sleeves and getting down to business. Ainsley working hard on scooping out the seeds.
The Jack-O-Lantern's. I did A's and Brad did K's. Kaylee wanted hers to be scary. Ainsley and I went for a more traditional approach. I did a lot of triangles because they are similar to an "A".
The weekend before Halloween we went to Mee-Maw and Paw-Paw's for early trick-or-treating. Here is our little lovely ladybug Ainsley.

Here is Kaylee flexing her Batman muscles!

This year we had a couple of firsts. Kaylee, who is in pre-school this year, had her first Halloween parade! I have attended these for the past 4 years, as I was working there then, but this was the first for her to participate and me to enjoy as a parent. My mom, dad, Brad, Brad's mom-Ginny, and I all met at MCC to watch it together. The children parade out and then come together to sing some Halloween songs. It is very cute! Kaylee had been practicing many of these for us at home in the weeks leading up to Halloween. I wasn't sure exactly how she would do. She can be a bit shy sometimes, especially walking out to many people staring at you. While she had been anxiously awaiting Halloweens arrival she was a little less than excited to get her costume on that morning. I think part of it was that Ainsley didn't have hers on and she had some fear that no one else would have a costume on either. When we got to school she saw other kids had their costumes on too and she was so excited, probably a little relieved too. She wasn't to sure about wearing her cape but apparently once at school she saw all these other costumes and was then inspired to put it on.

Here she is in all of her glory, cape and all! When she first came out she started wondering the wrong way, which cause everyone following her to go the wrong way. Poor Miss Michaels had to round them back-up and get them going in the right direction. Like watching a child chase a butterfly with Kaylee. She was more into everything around her rather than paying attention to what she should be doing.

All of the children getting ready to sing some spooktacular songs!
After school it was time to go up to Grandma and Grandpa Duffy's for Trick-or-Treating. This was our other first this year. Years passed we had always just gone to grandparent houses and then home. It has always been in the middle of the week which would equal a late night and when we would have to get up the next day it didn't seem worth it to me, as they were so young they wouldn't know the difference (zip it Melissa and Stefanie!-I know I'm a bad mom). Plus the grandparents are like a mini-Christmas on Halloween so it is way better then a mini-snickers. Since Kaylee was older this year and it was on a Friday we thought we would do it up right. We decided to go up do the big EP because it's a smaller town, we have family that lives there, and we could see the cousins.

Here are Kaylee and Ainsley with their cousins before we set out to trick-or-treat.

Here we are walking up to Uncle Matt's house. Who is that masked person? It's BATMAN!

Daddy following behind with Ainsley. She really enjoyed herself. She had her trick-or-treat bag but I didn't take her up to every house with Kaylee and Skyeler, however a lot of the houses we went to had "grandparent" type people their and the always sweetly insisted Ainsley get candy too. Some even felt Mom and Dad needed some. Very sweet.

Grandpa and Grandma Duffy got all the grandkids PJ's for Halloween and Kaylee got Batman one's that even light-up! She wore them to bed and almost the entire next day. We went to Brad's parents that Saturday for some more Halloween fun, and she opted to wear these instead of her costume. Who could blame her I am sure they were more comfortable. Fortunately Brad's parents got them PJ's too. So we gave them a bath there after dinner and I was able to get Kaylee to put on her other new PJ's. The Batmans have been washed.

Overall it was a fun Halloween with all the many activities and trick-or-treat spots. Kaylee was really ready to be done after an hour. So Brad drove the van with the girls while Skyeler and I hit a few more houses. We had one final stop to Miss Julie's, their tumbling teacher, which they both got a kick out of. She had special treats for them. It was cute. I have to say I overheard many parents say their kids were ready to be done, or I would hear the kids come back and ask if they could go home. For the most part they were younger kids, but it was rather amusing. We went back to my dad's and had chili and jack-o-lantern shaped pizza and of course dug in to our candy!