Halloween 2011

Our family is well-known for dragging out holidays and birthdays. And when I say "our" family, I do mean both my original family as well as my in-laws. It looks like I married into the right type of brood. We will celebrate multiple times, have multiple cakes, and do it all six weeks after the fact. We don't care, we just like to party. So it just makes sense that we do the same with Halloween!

This was the first year that we knew Brianna could start to understand what in the heck was going on at Halloween.

In 2009, she participated as a pumpkin, but she was just six months old. We ate all of her candy and she slept through most of the excitement at our church fall festival.


Last year she actually got a pail (mine from when I was a little girl!) and went trick-or-treating (to my parents and grandparents only) and was only slightly impressed by our Trunk-or-Treat at church. Plus we had someone new last year... not really in costume!


So we went full force in 2011, the Year of Brianna Understanding! Of course, "full force" for us is like "half force" for tons of other parents around the globe.

We took her a couple of weeks ago to pick out her Halloween costume. I was so looking forward to taking her to pick out her own costume! I couldn't wait to see what she picked. I already blogged about our fall festival at church, so you know the end of this book. She chose Snow White and poor Hunter got stuck with the leftovers from last year!

We had BIG plans for Monday, Halloween night, so instead of going to all the houses we wanted to in one night, we split up the nights. Saturday we went to see Granny and Granddaddy at their house, and then my parents at their house. Claire and Evan were at my grandparents' which made the whole night so much better! Granny and Granddaddy didn't even seem to notice the chaos, they were just thrilled that they finally had an excuse to give the kids all the candy they could ever want!

We had a pirate (Evan), butterfly (Claire), Snow White (Brianna) and a pumpkin (Hunter)!

Hunter was mainly content just to sit in Granny's lap and eat crackers!

The girls got candy and treats in their bags but they were still desperate for some of "Granddaddy's crackers"!

Unfortunately, my memory card on my camera was so low by the time we got to mom and dad's that I didn't get any pictures there.

Mondays are always busy for us but this one was especially busy! Brianna has preschool from 9-12, then we hurry home to eat lunch and take naps before leaving at 4:20 for Kindermusik. Because it was Halloween, the kids were allowed to wear their costumes to Kindermusik. Our whole family went for the first time ever and we had a blast! Brianna showed off more than ever and Hunter loved it as well!

After Kindermusik we drove straight to a big neighborhood in Pinehurst where we were meeting friends to go trick-or-treating together. I only got a couple of (bad) pictures before it got too dark to be snapping pictures.



It didn't take but about four houses before Brianna got the hang of saying, "Trick or Treat!!" although she normally said it before the people even opened the door! We ended up being there for over two hours and the kids absolutely loved it. Well, Hunter didn't really care, but the rest of the kids had a ball!

When we were leaving for mom and dad's yesterday for lunch, I asked Bri what she wanted to wear and she said, "Snow White!!" So much for my worries that I wouldn't be able to get her back into that costume after the fall festival...