My new favorite Holiday

Okay, so I think Halloween is the coolest. I don't feel any stress, and it's just a ton of fun - candy, costumes and cute kids. Elaina had a blast trick-or-treating. The first door we knocked on, she walked right in and started petting the dog. We had quite a time trying to get her to leave. After that she got the hang of it and loved it - also we went with some friends which added to our fun.
We always have fun carving jack-o-lanterns. Torry did Jack and I did Mr. Cyclops. We tried to involve Elaina, but after a couple of handfulls of pumpkin goop, she decided (correctly) that watching "Nightmare Before Christmas" and eating candy would be more fun.


So, we've had the Tinkerbell costume for almost a year now, so in order to make it a little more special for Halloween, I found some glitter stardust stuff to sprinkle in her hair. She loved it and went around showing everybody. It also made a mess of our house. Her enjoyment of it was well worth it though.
For one of our pre-Halloween family home evenings we made shaped sugar cookies. True to Elaina form, she dumped colored sugar all over them. The black sugar on her cookie was so thick that it turned her tongue black.


On another Family Home Evening night we made a haunted halloween graham cracker house. Although Elaina enjoyed helping out, she spent most of the time just eating the candy.




Torry here - Heather's tired and fresh out of caption ideas. So, here I go:
One Saturday we took a drive to a pumpkin patch. In addition to thousands of pumpkins in a big field, they had a big wagon and several bins full of pumpkins. But wait! They also had an area where you could use large slingshots to launch small pumpkins at targets.

On the non-pumpkin front, there was also face painting - Elaina loved her ladybug.










For those who don't know, we live in a planned community called Issaquah Highlands. As required by law in all planned communities, we had a fall Halloween festival in the neighborhood. Also mandated: a "green" theme. They even had all-natural gum flavored with mint extract and cane sugar, made of naturally occurring gum bases (tree sap I think) and colored with--get this--chlorophyll. It tasted vaguely of a lawn mower grass catcher. For those who didn't want natural mint tainting their consumption of chlorophyll, there was even a booth handing out free samples of wheat grass juice.

However, the green theme was contained to the gum and a few small signs. Everything else was pure old-fashioned Halloween fun. A costume parade, plenty of candy, pumpkin-carving contest, giant inflatable funhouse toys, fresh cider and pony rides made for a fun afternoon just blocks from our home.