As I sip my second cup of pumpkin spice coffee and nibble on the last of the pumpkin cream cheese muffins, it's a crisp 54 degrees outside and I'm relishing fall in the afterglow of another amazing Halloween. Halloween is one of my favorite kid-friendly holidays, next to Christmas, Easter and 4th of July {okay that's pretty much all of them}.
Jack is at the age where he anticipates Halloween and his excitement is infectious. Paige loves to follow whatever her brother does, so she happily wore the costume and within just a few trick-or-treat stops, she had mastered the ropes. Because I know that most people never actually read the blog posts, I'll let the photos mainly speak for themselves.
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| Nana painting Jack's wolf face |
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| The cape toss - her signature move. |
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| A sweet Little Red Riding Hood |
The many cheesy faces of Paige...
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| Jack the wolf...ooooowwww! |
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Nana happily made these adorable Halloween costumes.
Again, what would I do without my super-crafty mom? |
The best part of any good holiday gathering...the food.
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Boo cake balls for dessert, which were a huge hit!
The side story: One layer of Ben's birthday cake went horribly awry when I turned it out of the pan and it crumbled. So I mixed in some of the peanut butter icing, rolled into cake balls and froze them. This was the perfect event to use them, so I removed them from the freezer, dipped in white chocolate and decorated with black icing...voila! I love that I didn't have to throw out the cake and over half the work was already done.
I think these turned out better than the actual birthday cake did. |
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| More yummy desserts, thanks to Nancy's creativity |
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Festive wines and seasonal ales for the adults
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The Grimm's Fairy Tale Grooters Family
Hansel {with a little arm twisting to put the costume on for photos} and Gretel
with the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood. |
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The candy collectors -
Top clockwise: Jack, Sutton, Will, Logan and Paige |
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| Dorothy {Sutton} and Little Red {Paige} |
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| The Bone Man {Will} |
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| The Whites {Note Hansel ditched his lederhosen} |
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| The Clicks |
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| The little girls trick-or-treating like pros |
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We gave out about 800 pieces of candy by 8:30 p.m.
Our neighborhood Halloween is out of control! |
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| Jack Skellington Pumpkin |
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| It was a spooktacular Halloween! |
To rewind, we kicked the holiday off with our annual pumpkin patch fundraiser shoot with Terri Smith.
Every year she devotes her time and efforts to raise money for the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital Foundation's breast cancer cause and donates sitting fees from these photos in honor of Nancy's late mother-in-law, Marsha Click. Nancy recently blogged about this
here. She motivated me to cull through our old pumpkin patch photos, so here's a look over the last few years.
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| 2008 - Dinosaur (age 2) |
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| 2009 - Super Hero (age 3) |
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| 2010 - Bumblebee (age 10 months) and Bumblebee Transformer (age 4) |
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| 2011 - Big Bad Wolf (age 5) and Little Red (age 1) |
You can view all of this year's pumpkin patch photos
here. Thanks again to Terri for doing this year after year!!
Friday was Cowboy Day at Paige's preschool. An event Jack always enjoyed at Little Lambs and we have the most precious photos of our little cowboy every year sitting on the pony.
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| 2007 |
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| 2008 |
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| 2009 |
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| 2010 |
Even though Paige has ridden on a pony, apparently she refused on this day. Alas, this is the only photo I have of her from Cowboy Day 2011.
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| Sleepy before nap and mad at me for using my phone to take photos instead of letting her watch Elmo. |
She was a cute cowgirl and I want to cry like this because I won't have the pony photo to document it!
Friday was also the YMCA's annual Trick or Trot 5K race. That same night our neighborhood also hosts Halloween festivities at the Town Center. So with a little more arm twisting {I must seriously like getting dressed up}, I convinced Nancy to don a costume with me for the race. While it may appear from the photos that no one else was dressed up, I assure you that there were other costumed runners. Nancy {who's been the blogging queen lately} posted a funny rundown on her blog
here. She shared a few photos of the ridiculousness with me.
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A little Dr. Suess action with Thing 1 and Thing 2 - they are really fast, ya know?
We scoured the city for blue afro wigs, but all we could come up with were these Katy Perry bobs.
Oh well, they were cute nonetheless. |
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| A pre-race wave to our adoring fans |
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| Making our way uphill to the finish - can you tell us apart? |
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This one was too funny not to post.
We are so good, we raise the roof and run with our eyes closed. |
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Nancy and I with the kiddos at the photo booth after the annual screening of
"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on the lawn at the Town Center. |
Seriously though, our costumes were a huge hit and while we may not have finished first in our age division, we certainly would have won first place for our costumes or the people's choice award or something. One guy dressed up as the Cat in the Hat and I'm definitely kicking myself for not roping him into a photo with us.
Overall, we had a great weekend joined by Grandma Vicki, eating fresh, seasonal stone crabs and seafood gumbo, attending Halloween parties, crafting holiday decor, creating treats for friends, carving pumpkins and enjoying this beautiful fall weather.
I read! And oh my goodness...little R & the big bad wolf were precious!! I saw Terri's photos today too, turned out so great!! All these photos had me cracking up....especially seeing the photos again of those two skinny girls in blue wigs!! :-)
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