A Happy Halloween

Ah...Halloween. I'm so sad to see you go.

You are my favorite holiday, hands down.

This year there was so much Halloween festivity that I am *still* exhausted. In fact, I am going to finish this post, persuade my rather active 2 year old that we should probably nap, and then go crash for a while.

We started Halloween with a party on Saturday night. My lovely friend, Rachel, hosted and I got to help decorate and organize!

I love decorating and organizing.

Rachel went as a Cougar (the old lady predator type, not the big cat). For some reason, the only picture I have of Rachel is this blurry one of her with her friend, the Love Bug.

My best friend since the church nursery, Melissa, is visiting us out here in Colorado for the week. She went as a bunch of grapes.
Evan went as a mummy dressed as a pirate. He was most flabbergasted when the Queen of Egypt showed up. Silly mummy.
Do you like Evan's pirate hat? It was his when he was 5.
The mummy loved me. I went as Miss Havisham. She was kind of like a mummy.
My dear friend Melinda was a masquerade ball attendee.
Her boyfriend, Bryan, was a Garden Gnome and it was my favoritest costume of the night!
The party was a lot of fun and we stayed out much later than I thought we would. Especially since all of Rachel's and my kids were spending the night at our house during the party and we had to wake up with them in the morning. Which was Halloween day. And Elisabeth's birthday party.

It seemed like a good idea when we planned it all. We didn't think about our tiredness.

But, Elisabeth's party went off without a hitch!

I baked some witch's fingers.
And some candy corn cupcakes.
Elisabeth was most grateful for the gifts her friends brought. I was grateful that we know so many sweet, fun children.
Elisabeth wanted a pumpkin flavored spider cake for her birthday. Thankfully, my Grandma Sandy bought me a fabulous cake book for my birthday and I found a recipe for a pumpkin cake. It was delicious! (Yes, there are only 6 candles on that cake. I forgot to buy more. We all pretended that I had 2 more candles. Shush.)
It was a great party, but I was utterly exhausted due to only 5.5 hours of sleep the night before.
So, we all took a nap before heading to Peterson base for some trick-or-treating!!!!

I must tell you how wonderful Julia was when we went trick-or-treating. Her costume was a bit cumbersome, but she loved every minute of it.
I totally did not get a good picture of the girls together in their costumes. I am sad.
A side view of our Winnie the Pooh.
The weather was absolutely perfect in every way. The older kids were running from house to house and it was hard for Julia to catch up. Thankfully, the person at this house was slow to answer their door, so I was able to get a good picture of all the kids together.

As you may have guessed, we are already talking about what we're going to be next year. I have plans of being Cleopatra. Elisabeth is going to be Hermione from Harry Potter. Julia's still talking about Winnie the Pooh, but I'm sure she'll have changed her mind.