Halloween 2009

Here are some pictures of our Halloween festivities!

First, Jared requested that we have a big breakfast all together. With full tummies, we cleaned up the boys' rooms. That required much wheedling and encouragement, and took much longer than it should have. But we worked hard and got lots done.

Meanwhile, Ryan cleaned up the kitchen and brought in our home-grown pumpkins. Wowza, they looked so much bigger when they were in our house!

The first one I carved wasn't ripe, and it was soft and easy to cut. Zach wanted the half-green pumpkin, dictated what kind of face he wanted, and then I carved it. I was done with it before Ryan was done cutting, cleaning, and scraping "Big Daddy" (center in the photo above). When I started on our "small" pumpkin (on the left) I suddenly knew what was taking so long!

We scraped out a lot of the pumpkin flesh to cook. That took a long time! It simmered while Jared and I carved our Jack-o-lantern faces, then we hurried to clean up and get some dinner. Trick-or-treaters showed up early, just like they do every year. I don't get it. They're usually young kids, but why do they show up at 5:30? Do they go to bed at 7? Who goes to bed at 7? It wasn't even close to getting dark!

We weren't planning on handing out candy (being out ourselves), so we scrambled to find something to hand out. Then we hurried to get our costumes on, turn out the lights, and hit the neighborhood. It was full of kids! It was great. We saw several people from our ward, and learned where even more ward members live.

After making a circuit around part of our neighborhood, both boys said they were tired and wanted to go home. Wow, we weren't expecting it to be that easy! So we hit a few more people we knew, then headed home. That's when the candy fun began. Of course, the boys had to dump their buckets out and look at everything. We said they could have 5 pieces of candy, which Zach quickly chose and began to eat. But Jared was so busy classifying each different type that he ran out of time and only got to eat three. Typical!

I didn't want to put all 15 pictures in one post, so here's a link to our other pictures of the day's events, complete with captions to tell the story. Enjoy!