Halloween 2008

I love setting everything out for Halloween Day. I always do it the night before so the kids can wake up to it on Halloween morning. We don't do school on Halloween Day, so we have the entire day to play.
The kids made cards for Jeff and me. They were happy that Jeff missed his workout that morning, which meant that he was home when they got up. They were able to give him his card before he went to work. We started the day with cinnamon rolls with orange icing. I was able to find them with the icing already orange last year, but this year I had to color it myself. I thought they turned out okay...they tasted great.

We found the "Crafty Crawlers" kits at Target on clearance a few weeks ago. We made little critters that came with motors so they could walk around. They were so fun, though Ginger was a little confused with them walking around the house!

We made caramel apples and more of our ghost cookies to take with us when we went trick or treating with Jeff's brother and his family.

Madison chose to dress as a baby this year, complete with the pacifier and a diaper bag to put her candy in. Her cousin, Kinley, came up with the idea and wanted Madison to go as the same thing. We tried to get Kinley in on our Halloween plans, but it just didn't work out. Patrick went as Iron Man and Carter as a pirate. The kids even dressed their Build a Bear babies for Halloween. We bought them little baskets for their candy!

As always, we had a great time with Jeff's brother and his family....eating Frito Pies and trick or treating. They live in a nice, safe neighborhood. I'm thankful that they invite us to celebrate Halloween with them each year. The cousins love being together for it!

When the kids were babies, Jeff and I went through a few years of refusing to celebrate Halloween. We fell into the thinking that it was evil and knew that the kids were too young to ask us why we weren't trick or treating anyway. As they got older and entered into the school system, it was harder to avoid it. We got back into celebrating it with some reservation. Then, it just became part of us again. As we were doing some of our Halloween crafts, Carter asked my if Halloween was invented so that we could have fun. I paused as if to go into detail about the origins and give him a lesson on how we avoid thinking of it that way. Instead, I looked at him and simply said, "Well, Carter, it might have been started for the wrong reasons, but we choose to celebrate it just as a great way to have some fun!" That was all he needed....he was satisfied. When it's all said and done, the fun is what he remembers....oh, and the buckets of free candy!