Halloween

This Halloween was a lot of fun, mostly because Olivia is really starting to understand and look forward to the festivities. This is the first time I felt like I could really let her choose her own costume. I started by pulling up a bunch of kids' costumes on Amazon, and showing her them to give her some ideas. I assumed she would want to be a fairy, or princess, or butterfly, or something like that. I was surprised when she told me she wanted to be a witch. So over the next couple of weeks, I continued to ask her what she wanted to be, to see if a consistent trend emerged. She continued to tell me she wanted to be a "nice witch". Once she had me convinced, we ordered a really cute costume. Olivia was so excited for Halloween, she would ask us everyday if it was "Halloween day" yet. We had to keep telling her not yet, but soon!

The girls were lucky to have three Halloweens this year. The first was at my work/the girls' daycare. Every year we have a daycare parade, and all the employees line up to give out candy. Daddy came, and we scored big time. We had a ward trunk or treat at our ward Halloween party. In one of the trunks, a man was hidden under some blankets and would reach out whenever a kid tried to get some candy from a pot. This really disturbed Olivia. She only calmed down once I had her convinced that it was just a Daddy, like our Daddy, being silly and trying to make us laugh. Ellie was not phased at all by the scare tactic, and walked up and grabbed her candy while completely ignoring the groping arm.

Our last Halloween occurred on, well, Halloween. Allison came up to help Jeremy go around with the girls. Rachelle stayed home to hand out candy, and to elevate her feet (they have been really swollen in the final months of this pregnancy). The girls loved going around. Several of our neighbors have dogs, which Ellie was immediately drawn to. They even would let her come inside to see them. We ended up with quite the stash of candy thanks to Ellie. She would walk up, take a piece of candy, bring it back to Jeremy, who was holding her bag, and go back for more. I guess she was just too cute, because at every door they would let her go back a couple times. So she ended up with 3 times as much candy as Olivia, who understood that you only got one piece.

For days after, we often had a candy graveyard in our front room, which required nightly vacuuming. We also had some interesting nights when we had to cut off the candy supply, much to the horror of our girls.