Over a month of Halloween

 With my kids getting older my outlook and involvement in holidays has completely changed, and not by choice.  Porter LOVES anything scary and having to do with monsters, so Halloween is right up his alley.  When he was listening to some kids say what they were going to be for Halloween and it wasn't something scary he said it wasn't a real costume.  It has to be scary.  He made a kid cry.  I had to explain that costumes didn't have to be scary.  And what has made this obsession worse is that one of his best friends is all about Halloween all. year. long.  So when they had their decorations up in September Porter insisted, in a nice way of course, that we had to decorate too.  So there we were in September all decked out for Halloween.  Even after the decorations were up we apparently weren't scary enough so Porter drew a lot of scary pictures and hung them up ALL over the house.  I'm not big on having excess clutter around, so on October 31st after the kids were in bed I took all of the decorations down, and it felt good. 



 This is a small sample of what we did to celebrate:

 

 Gardner Village goes all out this time of year.  They have witches set up all over the place in fun settings and there is a scavenger hunt to find certain witches.  It was fun, even for me.  And they have Halloween specific stores and other activities this time of year.  Good times.

 The corn maze with cousins.

 Pumpkin patch - the kids could only choose a pumpkin that they could carry.  Hey, I wasn't about to carry three pumpkins.  They need to be self sufficient - we start them young :)  Next year they are getting jobs.

 I did The Night of the Running Dead race again this year.  This is their third year doing it and it keeps getting better.  Last year it was at 3pm and the race route was awful and confusing.  And last year I was a human.  The humans run 2 minutes before the zombies.  This year I was a zombie.  And it started at 9pm - waaaaay better time.  It was after the kids' bedtime but I knew they would have fun.  This year they had a prerace show talking about the zombie apocalypse and prepping for the humans to run being chased by the zombies, and the costumes and festivities were entertaining.  During the race they had zombie actors set up along the route "attacking" people, walking/shuffling/grunting around, even a bunch dancing to Thriller.  I forgot my ipod so this was the first race I did without music (way better anyway since there was so much going on), the first race I did at night, and the first time running with my hair down.  That last part may seem inconsequential and not worth mentioning, but it was weird for me...hey everyone has their thing.  The kids got to bed late but it was totally worth it.  I am so doing this race again next year.

Pumpkin carving - I don't think we even carved pumpkins last year.  We were living at my parent's so I guess I was out of my element or something.  Thus, this was the first year that the girls got to help carve pumpkins.  In all honesty it is actually Jeff doing the carving, and may I say he did a pretty dang good job.  Check it:

 See, an awesome job.  Scarlet's is on the left and it's Snow White, then it's Simone's which is a happy face, and of course Porter's had to be all scary and complicated but dang did it turn out good.

And here they are:  Simone as Belle, Scarlet as Ariel in her wedding dress, and Porter as a zombie skeleton.  What's awesome is we didn't have to buy anything this year.  We bought those skeleton pajamas that glow in the dark for Porter last year for Halloween and to wear to bed (he's been wearing those pjs all year) he just wanted to zombie it up, then my niece is almost 10 so she has outgrown all of her princess dress up clothes so the girls had their choice as to which princess they wanted to be.  Easy costumes this year.  For trick or treating I was planning on going around the condos and townhouses where we live, but people kept saying that no one trick or treats here.  So we drove to a wealthy part of Bluffdale and did it there.  Smart choice!  Awesome candy selection, fun decorations, and there was even a mini haunted house.  Some day I will live in that neighborhood.

So Halloween was fun, and long, this year.  There was a lot more we did that I didn't have pics of.  We did a bunch of Halloween crafts, watched Halloween movies, listened to Halloween music, and read scary stories.  I had my fill.  It was fun, but I'm glad it's over.  Now on to the next holiday!