HALLOWEEN!

As with any great holiday, the celebrating begins several days (or weeks) before the actual day. This year's Halloween was no different. And although I did use collages to cut down on the length of this post, I still must warn you of the picture overload!

The festivities began with Aubrey's preschool field trip to the pumpkin patch! I took along Carson with us this year, and even though the weather was terrible (can you say MUD?), we still managed to have a great time!


Our WET hayride....


Lots of fun in the straw maze, picking our pumpkins, looking at the horses, and of course snack with Aubrey's class!

A couple days later, we went to Boo at the Zoo. This is an annual event at Zoo Boise that we've heard about for several years, but had never gone. So we decided to check it out for ourselves this year. The kids had a blast!! They were super excited to get to wear their costumes out of the house. We saw lots of our friends there, and of course got a good jump-start on our candy collecting!

Aubrey looks forward to the giraffe slide every time we go to the zoo. So when she headed over to take her turn, Carson wasn't far behind. He's always been a little timid around slides, but he really wanted to try it. So, he followed Aubrey up the stairs, watched her go down, sat down to take his turn.........

......and then started crying and screaming for all the zoo to hear! I wasn't quick enough to snap a shot of Brian having to scale the slide to go rescue him, but it was pretty funny. Maybe next year Bug!

What a fun day! I can see why half of Boise goes every year. I definitely think it will be added to our Halloween activities list for years to come!

After the zoo, while the kids were still in costume, we headed over to Grandma Thompson's house for some early trick-or-treating!

Halloween weekend was full of cookie-making, pumpkin-painting, FUN!

After the kids painted their pumpkins, Brian noticed their paint plates. We really laughed because this says so much about our two kids' different personalities. See if you can guess which plate belongs to which child??

Posing with the finished products (and Carson trying not to get paint even more places than he already had)! Brian and I are really going to have to start working on our pumpkin painting skills......maybe we'll go back to carving next year!

Finally, Halloween day. The kids were so excited to wear their Halloween shirts! Here they are right before we changed into costumes.....I think they might be a little excited......

How sweet is that??

And the big night has arrived...... The princess and Spiderman!

Aubrey called herself Cinderella because her princess dress was blue. And much to his father's delight, Carson has really become obsessed with superheroes!

And all three kids are off to trick-or-treat our neighborhood!!

They LOVED trick-or-treating again this year. After we went up and down our street, we headed to a little carnival with some friends from across the street at their church. The kids had a good time playing games, dancing with the performers on stage, and of course getting more candy!

After that, we headed over to our cousins the Jensen's house. Aubrey talked Callie into dressing up in a coordinating costume again this year! She was Cinderella's fairy godmother! What a great sport Callie is and Aubrey had the most fun trick-or-treating with her!

And here they are with all their LOOT! They spent quite a bit of time looking through all their candy the next day. I let them eat about 1 or 2 pieces of candy usually a day......so at that rate we should be finished up just in time for Christmas!

Happy Halloween!!