Halloween 2009

Wow! Another Halloween has come and gone! This year we planned to spend Halloween in Mexico and celebrate La Dia de Los Muertes... but our plans drastically changed at the last minute due to my grandpa's severe illness and we ended up spending Halloween here after all!
We started off the holiday festivities with our playgroups annual Halloween bash! My good friend Kim hosted this year, and thankfully, because we had such a great turnout, we needed her big house to hold everyone! All the parents brought Halloween themed dishes, treats, and goodies to share. The food and drink was fabulous! The kids had games and contests to partake in such as decorating cupcakes and playing HOT PUMPKIN. ALMOST everyone came in costume, adults included. It was a great time!
Then we attended the annual buddy bash at Judy's church. It's a yearly tradition where the middle school youth group transforms the church basement into a haunted house and the community room is filled with crafts and games. Paige's favorite game every year is the bobbing for apples, and Cole likes musical chairs. They always have a costume parade and end it with a costume judging contest. Cole won that very contest when he was 3 months old and dressed as a pumpkin!
On Halloween day we got the kids dressed up for trick or treating at Southlands. This is also an annual event, but our first year doing this one. Usually we do BOO at the ZOO, but the kids decided they didn't want to go there this time. Trick or Treating Southlands was actually really fun, and was very similar to the zoo, only without the enterance fee!! We spent the afternoon with a bunch of friends from the neighborhood and kids Paige and Cole knew from school. It was actually really neat and we got to meet a lot of new people.
For those of you not familiar, Southlands is our outdoor mall. It has an olde tyme main street feel with street facing stores. Most all of the stores participated and the kids got a TON of candy. We walked all the way UP main street and then back DOWN. The kids were so tired we had to lie them down for a nap so they could go back out that night!
After naptime we gathered all of our stuff and headed to our friends Angie and Bill's house. Ang and Bill are friends we have had for about 6 years now, and the kids have grown up together. We drank wine and beer and had yummy pizza and chili and then got the kids all dressed up. We were so lucky it was great weather, so layers were needed, but no coats!! Robert, Bill and some of the other neighborhood dad's took the kids out and Ang and I got to stay in and pass out candy to the trick or treaters. This was the first year I didn't go door to door with the kids, but I had a really nice and relaxing evening with my good friend! After the kids returned they were off to play and we sat around and enjoyed each other's company awhile longer. We ended the night by trick or treating my mom's house so she could see the kids in their costumes as well!
This year Halloween was peaceful, relaxing, and tons of fun! We had a wonderful time and made some great memories. The only thing we didn't get to do was run through a corn maze... it was the first year we didn't do that since Paige was born... but we had a huge snowstorm and cold cold weather the week leading up to Halloween and it just didn't work out! Can't wait for next year!!