Halloween

I must admit, I feel a little mourning for the absence of witches, jack-o-lanterns, and black and orange in my home.  This year's Halloween season was a fun one.  

We sure played the part:

We ate lots of them.  

Homemade applesauce, apple cider, apple doughnuts, CANDY, yummy baked goods from friends...  

My favorite memory: Taylor not being able to keep his little sugar-magnet eyes and fingers off of some adorable festive cupcakes made by our new friend, Jamie.  (Can you guess which one he chose to eat?)

I got to host Taylor's playgroup during the week of Halloween.  

We learned about skeletons.  

We got to play with Taylor's new flexible skeleton toys, made bone formations out of noodles, played Halloween games, and read a family favorite Halloween story, Once-A-Year-Witch, which my grandma read that to my dad as a boy, then later to me.  It was fun to introduce to Taylor this year, who now loves it too.

A few days before Halloween, our ward hosted a Trunk-Or-Treating party and chili/ pie cook-off.  

It was there that we unveiled this year's costumes: 

Taylor, the cowboy (my dad's costume that he wore when he was Taylor's size!) and Russell, the dragon.  Oh yeah, yeah...and Tiff the pirate.  Sorta. :)

The boys loved trunk-or-treating, and we all managed to sqeeze into the church to warm-up and enjoy some yummy chili too.  It was so crowded in there...possibly the most well-attended church activity I've ever been to!

Andrew and Taylor carved the pumpkins that we had bought at the pumpkin patch the week before and created the scary Jack-O-Lanterns you see above.  Andrew encouraged Taylor to reach into the pumpkin and pull out the "guts" inside.  And Taylor thought it was cool...for a little while at least.  

The kids were cute for Trick-Or-Treating while they lasted.  

Little Russell was hyper-stimulated and loved living it up in his costume with all the kids and candy around.  

But poor Taylor--after just under an hour, his energy left and some tears came.  He cuddled-up to his green monster bag like a blanket and told us some of the most shocking words that have ever come out of his little boy mouth: that he wanted to go home and sleep...for a long, long time.  

Poor sick boy.  Talk about bad timing.

On a happier note, the next morning he was mostly back to himself.  Naturally, he was totally in the mood to eat lots of Halloween candy and help Mommy take down Halloween/ decorate the house for Thanksgiving.  

Love it.  I wish I could rebound like that. :)