Halloween 2011

We had a great day today. I managed to have a photo shoot with the kiddos this evening before we headed out trick-or-treating. Trying to snap photos of Caitlin before she escapes and climbs or crawls away is quite a feat. My camera's shutter speed isn't fast enough and most of the super cute smiles were missed by my slow camera. But oh well!   

These two still looked adorable and I was just happy to snap these before they both were begging to take their costumes off. Andrew made it about 10 houses in his costume and then stripped down to just a t-shirt, pants, and his boots.

After waiting for awhile for Kevin to get home, we decided to just join up with our neighbors and start canvasing the neighborhood for treats. The traffic home was brutal today! 

This was Andrew's first year ever of trick-or-treating and he was a fan. His speed picked up significantly once he realized that every house had treats at it.

Catie just chilled and watched the kids file past her.

The little dude was especially excited about some of the king sized candy bars he got. I was too. He may never see them again.

After about 7-10 houses, Andrew was dying of thirst and even the idea of more candy did not sound appealing. He started saying that he was all done with trick or treating. I was floored... and a little disappointed. We will need to work on trick or treating endurance next year.

Fortunately a quick drink got him re-energized for some more candy hunting.

For our first round of trick-or-treating we crashed my neighbor Kara's little party and for our second round we crashed my neighbor Sahar's party (and Kevin joined us for the second round). The kiddos were so excited to hang out together and run from house to house.

The sweaty fireman looked more like a paintball target than a fireman... but he made sure to tell everyone, "see I'm a fireman, I have fireman boots on..." just in case they were worried that he was grabbing candy and not in a costume!

Cate lasted about an hour and then Kevin took her home.

To be honest, I was kind of done with trick or treating after about 15/16 houses. By that point Andrew wanted to visit every house in our development... so I bribed him to go home by telling him he could eat some candy once we got there (he didn't eat any while we were collecting candy because he was so focused on his "get candy" mission).

Fortunately that worked and we went home and spent the rest of the night passing out candy, eating jack-o-lantern pizzas, and he ate one bag of skittles. He is seriously not my child. He didn't ask for any more candy after he ate the one small pack. He was more interested in the tiny play-doh containers I was passing out to the trick-or-treaters.

This year without planning to... I completely forgot to buy candy. I had tons of leftover prizes from our Halloween carnival, so we gave that out (and some candy that a neighbor randomly dropped by). The teenagers that stopped by were raving about the play-doh. They were so excited. I thought it was hysterical. I am kind of happy that we won't have tons of B-list candy hanging around for the next month (since I already ate the A-list candy at the beginning of October).

If you want to check out how we spent the rest of our Halloween day, you can see my post about it here. We had a little Witches and Warlocks Party. It was simple and fun.

Now I am tired and completely done with Halloween.

Bring on a month full of gratitude and giving thanks... and full of my birthday celebrations... since I love my "Birth-month!" We are creating our Thankful tree tomorrow!

Happy Halloween!