Halloween

We were invited to a Halloween party at a friend's house. Rachel was invited to her friend, Lydia's, movie night, but the rest of us went. The kids tied balloons with candy inside around their ankles and tried to pop the other kids' balloons while protecting their own. 

 We headed outside and played a few more games, then had dinner.

 The kids had fun dressing up and it was fun to hang out with some adults while the kids ran around partly crazy.

 Monday night we gutted and carved our pumpkins.

 Megan and Rachel made the owl on the left and Annie and Ryan worked great together making Jack, on the right:

 The youth were in charge of putting on a Halloween carnival for the ward. Each class came up with different games, and Rachel's class decided they would do face painting. The spent a while the week before during their YW activity practicing. Rachel came home looking like this:

 Black face paint does NOT come off easily.

The night of the carnival Megan decided about 5 minutes before time to leave that she wanted to be a blue owl instead of the witch she had been planning on. Rachel painted her face and I found a blue hat to go with all her blue clothes. Megan's favorite station at the carnival was the fishing booth. She liked getting fun surprises.

 Ryan liked the nerf gun shooting booth. You got a prize whenever you hit a target. And if you didn't hit anything. :)

They ended the evening with a costume parade and then Trunk or Treating.

Then it was finally the big day, actual Halloween. Megan stuck with her witch costume this time, Annie was Penelope Clearwater from Harry Potter, Rachel was an 80s girl, and Ryan was Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes.

 The cousins came over and we all trick or treated together and headed home with our loot.

 Ryan sorting his loot, making a candy histogram:

The kids had pretty much free rein with their candy from Tuesday (the trunk or treat) until Saturday when we had them pick their 35 favorites, and donate the rest to the Mom Candy Collection. I use that candy for piano treats each week (if they've practiced every day), special rewards, gingerbread houses, Christmas candy, and such. So they get a lot of it back, just spread throughout the year. I weighed the Mom Candy Collection and it's coming in right around 10 pounds of candy. I wonder how much they had before they started eating it all.