This is Halloween 2012

Dave had to work on Halloween night but the kids and I were able to go trick-or-treating and have some fun. Ashlynn went as Snow White and Dawson went as Jake (from Jake and the Never Land Pirates). Ashlynn was going to be Izzy (also from Jake's show) but we took her costume back about a month ago and exchanged it for Snow White. She's really getting into princesses and loves to dress up in her princess high heels and crowns so we figured we might as well get her a costume that she will have fun dressing up in even after Halloween. It's a little long for her, I made a tutu to go underneath it so she wouldn't step on it when she was walking. So I don't think she'll be playing dress up in it until she grows another inch or two taller. That way she can play in it without the tutu. The tutu made it really puffy and pretty though! And she was wearing her twinkle toes shoes so her dress would light up as it walked. It was pretty!

Anyway, here's another picture of Dawson. He kept making that face, I'm not sure why. *lol* I have a couple pictures of him with his eyes looking different ways but his mouth is the same in every picture. He makes such a handsome pirate!

And Ashlynn, our pretty princess!

Here are the kids with their cousins, Hailee and Drea.

And with me, Papa, Brandee, and Becca, too.

The kids did a lot of trick-or-treating in my dad's neighborhood. It was so fun. It almost felt like a movie, his neighborhood totally came alive with happy kids running to each door, and friendly homeowners sitting around fires in their driveways handing out candy.

Ashlynn rode in her stroller most of the time and was just looking around and taking everything in. Dawson got a ton of candy and his bucket started getting heavy so I would empty it into Ashlynn's bucket every now and then to give him a little break.

After we finished up trick-or-treating at my dad's we headed over to my mom's. Her Halloween tradition is to make chili and we eat it out of bread bowls and then go trick-or-treating. Dinner was yummy and we were ready to go out to more houses. There is a house in their neighborhood that always puts together a spook alley for Halloween night and it's really popular! The kids wanted to go through it so we walked down to that house, trick-or-treating along the way. The spook alley would have been too scary for Ashlynn so she went trick-or-treating with my mom while the rest of us went through. Dawson was a little scared but I told him we should just scare the people who were jumping out instead of letting them scare us. After that he had fun saying "rawr" to everyone who jumped out. He wanted to go again after we were done! I was proud of him. This was a lot scarier than the kids haunted house we took them through a couple of weeks ago. He was so brave!

Here is a picture of my mom and Dawson. They were both pirates!

And here are their buckets! Dawson's is overflowing and Ashlynn's is more than half full. Ashlynn only went to 10-15 houses so most of her candy is really Dawson's. We don't keep Halloween candy in the house for too long anyway, Dave will take most of it to work with him. We'll keep the dum-dums and m&m's for the kids to have every now and then, other than that we're getting it out of here. :)

Dawson wanted to keep trick-or-treating after everybody else was done. I had to talk him into staying at Nana's with the rest of us. I loved seeing him so excited and having so much fun. Ashlynn was definitely enjoying herself, too. It was a lot of fun being back in Utah and being able to celebrate Halloween with our family again. It would have been perfect if Dave would have been off work to celebrate with us. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Decorating the house, carving pumpkins, and watching the kids go trick-or-treating is so much fun!

Here is what our patio looked like this year:

The apartments we live in were having a contest for $25 off of rent to the best patio/balcony, I hope we won! :) We also had Halloween lights around all of our bedroom windows and our front door was decorated a bit. I can't wait until we own our own home, it will make decorating for the holidays a lot more fun!