Halloween is Finally Here ! ! ! !

Halloween is one of the Best Holidays every created. I love planning costumes and making the most of a candy centered holiday. This year, I had a different approach; as little stress and financial investment as possible. It surpised the kids. Usually, we go all out to dress them up in a creative way. I let the kids come up with costumes on their own and make them too. I set the unprecidented limit of $10.00 per costume. Mia was easy. She used her white cat costume from her Spring dance recital. She decided she was going to be a "White Super Cat". (She ended up wearing her Cheerbear costume during the night because it was warmer). Claire wanted to be a cat also. She made her tail and wore her black clothes and painted on her wiskers and nose. I only helped a little on the ears. I was feeling guilty for not doing anything on her costume. Byron rumaged his costume box. He decided on Boba Fett again, only improved. This time he had a blaster. Grant got the creativity award. He thought for several weeks and decided on a 'Cereal" Killer. I only had to supply a box of Cheerios. He put bullet holes, blood, and a fake knife through the box.

Halloween Day was full of fun things. We went to the City carnival. Grant volunteered with the youth in our ward. He got to man a bounce house with his friend Cole. Byron, Claire and Mia played a couple of games. They spent most of their time in the three bounce houses. They got some candy and had a lot of fun. (Grant didn't have that much fun. He was bored. To compensate, they gave the volunteers a ton of candy).

In the evening we went to the Canterbury St. Block party. They do a mini carnival for the kids. They had even more fun. They had a costume contest. Grant won his age division. Yeah Grant. (I heard the judges laughing and talking about his clever costume, so I knew he was going to win). The party finished with the most efficient trick-or-treating you have ever seen. The kids marched in a parade along one side of the street and up the other. The adults stood in two lines, one on each side of the street, and stuffed handfuls of candy into their bags. It took 10 minutes and everyone had run out of candy and the kids could go back to the games. Byron, Claire, Grant and I visited one more small neighborhood before we went home.

My kids don't know how lucky they are. I used to dream of living in a traditional, close-together neighborhood just for the trick-or-treating. Please understand, I loved the wilderness lifestyle. Trick-or-treating for a couple of years on horse-back was cool. But 10 neighbors over several miles of dirt road was not very productive for candy hording. I would have gone for hours just to see how many pounds of candy I could have gotten if I had lived in a neighborhood. I guess it just isn't as big of a deal for my kids. They were happy with what they got and we were all home at 8:30pm. In all honesty, they got more than enough candy. It is just the principle of the thing. . . Halloween is for getting lots and lots of candy!

P.S. Manipulating photos on blogger is driving me insane. I can't get my photos to go where I want them. Any suggestions?