Monday, November 2, 2009

Happy Halloween!!

Well Halloween has come and gone and we sure had a lot of fun! I would love to fill in all the things that we have done since our trip to San Diego, but sadly now that I have some time my hard drive is in Minnesota trying to salvage my pictures! So any way we will start from here and I will vow to be better about backing up my photos and updating my blog!!

One of our favorite family activites has always been carving pumpkins. When Brian and I were in college we would get the fancy carving kits and carve elaborate designs. Well now with two kids we and they don't have as much time or patience and so we settled for 3 funny (not scary, per Josie's request.) pumpkins and one cute little monster.

Josie dug right in a helped clean out her pumpkin. She has become such a little scientist asking all kinds of questions about the insides, making lots of observations that the guts were squishy, wet and slimy. She asked about the seeds, and then proceeded to tell us about how farmers plant seeds and they need water and sun and time to grow into pumpkins. She even designed her own pumpkin face which I gladly carved out for her.
Ellie wasn't quite as gung-ho about digging right into a slimy pumpkin so we put in all out on the table for her to explore at her own pace. She touched it a little but was much more into checking out the pumpkins all lit up and ready to go. The monster was her favorite.
This is the first Halloween that Ellie has gone trick-or-treating. Last year if I remember correctly she slept through most of Halloween and barely got to wear her costume. This year she was a very funny little clown. She loved her costume and even though she is not a fan of strangers who want to talk to her in the store and there aren't many people that she would just walk up to and talk to the idea of getting candy pushed all fears aside and she was a very happy little clown running from one door to the next.
Josie has been deciding her own costumes for the past couple of years. This year she wanted to be a princess and she wanted her dress to be pink. So a couple of months ago we started looking for patterns for Grandma Grant. We like to get our requests in early since they have to go the farthest. Josie picked this dress because it has 3 skirts and she is 3! Well she was by far the prettiest princess that I saw all night! The picture almost doesn't do it justice. This is the princess dress girls dream about. The one you just have to spin and twirl in all night long. She got so many compliments on her dress people could not believe that her Grandma made it. Her preschool teacher told Josie to start talking to Grandma about her wedding dress!
Here are the girls all ready to hit the streets!

Our neighborhood is the place to be for trick or treating. We easily had over 100 trick-or-treaters, I ran out of candy by 7:30 and I had bought 10 bags. I had to break into the snack drawer in the pantry and Ellie's loot just to make it until 8:00! I knew we had a lot of kids in our neighborhood, but I had no idea. It was also nice to meet some of our neighbors because nobody ever is outside in the summer, but on Halloween people sit on the porch waiting for the kids and the cul-de-sac at the end out or street had the road blocked the BBQ set up and a regular old party going on! I am already excited for next year.