Happy Halloween!!!!

We awoke this morning with 2 monkeys running straight for the Halloween advent calendar. The Halloween witch has been leaving goodies every morning, but this morning was the finale. Their Halloween baskets were filled with a bunch of non-edible treasures...the witch figured they'd get enough of that later tonight. With silly string in their baskets (the kids have been begging for some ever since they saw it in the store a month ago) we immediately hit the backyard for a silly string fight. They had so much fun!!!

After a gourmet pancake breakfast (Daddy loves his complex pancake batter, so whatcha gonna do?) made with our favorite Halloween pancake mold designs it was FINALLY time to carve the pumpkins. (They've been asking since we got them when we were going to carve them. We scooped the pumpkins out last night so the seeds could start baking...YUM!!! Mr. D LOVED scooping up the seeds. "They're SO slimy!!!!" Little Miss A was a little more apprehensive about getting dirty. Before we could start carving, we hit the computer to find our favorite designs...nothing too elaborate this year. :) Little Man picked out a spider, Little Miss A picked a cat. They were both so eager to help.

Once the pumpkins were ready for the night, we went back in the house to FINALLY make our chocolate cookie Haunted House. No pictures of the creating process...we were all way too sticky for that. :) The kids were much more helpful with it this year. In the years past, I've been the one doing it. The kids are getting so much more independent with our projects in the kitchen. YEA!!! :)

After an afternoon snack of pumpkin seeds, it was time to get ready to head to some friends house in the neighborhood for some good old fashioned trick-or-treating.

(We all can't wait for next year...trick-or-treating on our own street. Not enough people moved in yet to warrant it this year.) The kids had so much fun. At first they were a little too quiet and shy to say "trick or treat" and were needing reminders to say thank you and Happy Halloween, but by the end they had it down. When we got home it was time to check out the loot. They dumped their baskets on the table and starting sorting. They both were organizing all the candy as they searched through...all the lollipops over here, all the sour things over there, chocolate here, etc. (I totally remember doing that when I was a kid, I'll have to ask J if he did the same.)

Anyway, it totally reminded me of Halloween when I was a kid. There are a few major differences in Halloween now and Halloween way back when though....

For starters, we had to just design our own pumpkin carving...no stencils to make it perfect, you had to just get in there, draw it out, cross your fingers and hope it worked. Another thing that J and I were talking about last night is the number of houses that are self service candy stations. (Granted our house is always one of them, since we both go with the kids.) But honestly, I think we could count on one hand the number of houses the kids actually had to say "trick-or-treat." Not exactly the experience we had when we were kids, but they had fun none-the-less. :)