Halloween Festivities

A little late to post about our Halloween-- of course you already know from our post about our orchard tradition that the boys chose to dress up as Charlie Brown and Snoopy this year.

Aside from the orchard, we keep Halloween pretty simple.  We carved pumpkins a couple days before Halloween, which of course is always fun considering our boys are still too young to wield sharp knives.  So the boys decided what they wanted on the pumpkin, helped clean out the pumpkin a little bit, and then Daniel and I sat carving away.  Leeland decided this year that he wanted a Lego man pumpkin, and Hayden followed suit, so Daniel and I made a friendly competition out of who could carve the pumpkin best.... of course that was up until, mine looked pretty terrible and I no longer wanted my name attached to it.  Point 1 for Daniel!  He is much better with a knife than I.

The ladies LOVED the pumpkin seeds and insides.

Then for Halloween night in years past, we have done church trunk or treats and gone to friends houses, but this year, our schedule was packed with work for both of us, getting dinner and getting Daniel to work that night, so we opted for low key and trick or treated around our neighborhood.  This was the boys first time doing door to door trick or treating and they really liked it.  We kept it small, and just did a small portion of our neighborhood and that worked perfect for their age-- they were getting cold and they were ready to head home to actually eat some candy.

Then, I was totally shocked and incredibly thrilled to discover that the boys enjoy GIVING out candy more than they liked the trick or treating.  Like I said, in years past we've done the trunk or treat thing so I haven't bought candy to even give out-- I just usually turn off our porch light because we aren't there... BUT this year, we went around the block and came back, the boys ate a few pieces of candy and I told them that now it was our turn to look for trick or treaters.

They were thrilled!  When those first trick or treaters came to the door, the boys were bouncing around, welcoming them, telling them all happy halloween and thank you for trick or treating.  It was adorable!  And they were SO generous with the candy that we almost ran out.  Leeland was even offering to give trick or treaters HIS candy.  It really warmed this Momma's heart to see!

Hope you all had a safe and Happy Halloween!  It's really hard to believe that it's November!  Even this self proclaimed crazy Christmas lady is in shock that we are only 50 days away from Christmas now!