Halloween 2010

Since it's almost Thanksgiving, I thought that now would be the perfect time to post pictures from our October/Halloween festivities.  This year has probably been the most fun for our family holiday-wise with the kids now being old enough to really "get" the whole concept of traditions and celebrations.  They were so excited to pick out pumpkins, choose costumes (and then narrow down their many choices of costumes), and to then, of course, get some candy!

One day we went to Shaw Pumpkin Farm in my hometown of Milford, OH.  I don't ever really remember going there as a kid, but I'm sure I did at some point.  It's really one photo-op after another for parents, but the kids really enjoyed interacting with each of the different pumpkin sets.

Here's Nicholas with his "Daddy Pumpkin" in the area dealing with military/service jobs (police, fire, etc).  Renae's version of the "Daddy Pumpkin" was posing with the SWAT pumpkin guy.  

Appropriately enough, Renae really wanted to pose with the Piglet Pumpkin in the Winnie-the-Pooh area.  We have called her our own little piglet before because she has such a cute little face, loves wearing pink, and is, well, a fan of snacking like a little piglet!

We went to the pumpkin farm with my mom, my sister-in-law, Sarah, and my three little nieces.  The five cousins (nieces + our two) loved this pretend outhouse.  They even wanted to see if all five of them would fit in the outhouse...and succeeded.  I'm pretty sure that my 18 month-old niece was right in the middle of the group and didn't enjoy it as much as the other four kids!

Once we were able to finally purchase our pumpkins the week before Halloween, we got right to carving them.  Brandon was doing homework, so he wasn't as hands-on as the rest of us, but he still helped with the photography portion.

I had a theory that Renae would really get into touching the pumpkin guts and scooping them out, and Nicholas would take one look at them and be disgusted.  I was right.  That's just how our kids are.  It pretty much ended up that I did all the work, and the kids just watched and gave pointers along the way.

We ended up just carving one pumpkin because that's all we had time to do.  Renae was pretty proud of our pumpkin display, though!

We also got to go to our ward's Halloween dinner/trunk-o-treat.  Earlier in the day, I had started shaving Brandon's head because his hair was looking a little messy, and just for fun I told him I was going to give him a mohawk.  Well, that gave Brandon the "great" idea to keep the mohawk for the ward party that night (he promised he would shave the rest off before going to work at 10PM that night).  Nicholas was very excited about his skeleton costume, and Renae just loved dressing up as a clown.  The funny thing is that with the exception of the hat and nose, this is a typical outfit Renae would choose to wear on any given day.

Posing with my kids and their candy in the back of our van after the trunk-or-treating was done.

On Halloween night, we went to dinner at our friends' home.  The Mahoneys used to be our old next door neighbors when we lived in the townhouse a few blocks away from where we live now, and they have two kids that are right about the same ages as our kids.  It was fun getting together with them because we don't seem to do it often enough, and the kids were extra excited to go trick-or-treating in the costumes after dinner.

Renae, being her helpful self, helped their son Aidan carry his candy basket.  The kids really were all so cute to watch this year!

Then our little munchkins did something pretty bizarre--they laid down right in the middle of the road for a rest.  We didn't really want to encourage that behavior, but they were so cute that we just had to take a picture...and then lecture them about how unsafe that was.

Mommy and her two cuties!