A Week of Halloween Fun

It's been a full week of Halloween activities and by last night we were all exhausted and ready to settle back into our normal routine. Last weekend my parents surprised us with a visit from California to watch the kids in their primary program at church. This year was Andrew's last program and Kaitlyn's first. I couldn't see Kaitlyn from where I was sitting with my class but everyone else told me she not only sang the songs but danced through them too. We enjoyed having my parents here for the weekend and decorated Halloween cookies with them.

Our neighbors, the Warners, always have a pumpkin carving party the week before Halloween with literally over 100 pumpkins. Here are a couple of the pumpkins the kids carved at their house this year.

Friday night was our annual doughnut party. I spent all day in the kitchen making over 50 doughnuts and probably twice that many doughnut holes. This was a tradition started by our friends the Little's when we were living on campus at the U when Jason was in medical school. We loved it so much we had to keep up the tradition when we moved on. We have shared doughnuts with so many wonderful friends over the years. Jason got out what our kids have named "the scary mask" and spent half the evening on the porch scaring people as they came to our house. He has a couple favorite people to scare although I won't mention any names! He made a couple small kids cry and I had to make up a new rule that he couldn't scare anyone under the age of 5. Hopefully their parents are still friends with us! Every year when my feet are aching so bad at the end of the day I wonder if it is worth it but it has been a lot of fun and I don't think my family or neighbors will let me quit at this point!

The kids had so many fun activities to wear their costumes to this week they were almost tired of them by Halloween (not to mention Kaitlyn lost some of hers and the dress was ready to fall apart by last night.) Here are some pictures of them dressed up to go trick-or-treating. Andrew was a ninja, Jared was Harry Potter, and Kaitlyn was Sleeping Beauty.

Just when it was time to go trick-or-treating it started pouring rain. We took our time getting ready to go hoping it would stop but it just kept coming. Jason finally headed out the door with some umbrellas and the kids didn't even complain about getting cold or wet. We also got a beautiful rainbow when the storm was finally about over. We finished the weekend with a family party on Sunday night. What a fun week but I think I can wait a year for more Halloween parties!