Halloween

Halloween is a pretty big event here in the desert.  People go all out decorating their houses and on Halloween, sit in their driveways with neighbors to hand out candy and chat.  

It makes sense, I guess, because it is finally getting cool enough to reemerge during the day and be outside after so many hot, hot months.

It felt like Halloween was a week long event with plenty of opportunities to wear a costume and dress up.  We started with painting our pumpkins like we did last year.

 Then, the Friday before Halloween, Cate and Timmy's school hosted a "Trunk or Treat" event.  They wore their costumes, bounced in a bounce house, played bean bag toss games, earned snow cone tickets, watched a movie in the courtyard while inhaling popcorn with friends, and finally went from car to car to trick or treat.  They loved it all.  Timmy didn't even need the bounce house.  He just jumped up and down the whole time.

This week at school it was "Noah's Days".  Both Cate and Timmy chose to be giraffes and made their "costumes" in class.  We got to spend the morning with them at school going from room to room to work on different crafts and games.  Cate loves a good craft and could have stayed all day.

Nana was visiting from Des Moines, so she got a chance to see C&T's classrooms and meet their teachers too.

After finishing up her third "Ark" related craft, Cate finally agreed to go and check out the petting zoo.

Timmy particularly loved the cow and the little black bunny rabbit.

After lunch and a short rest (and a trip for pizza), it was time to turn into Woody and Rapunzel.  Cate was very concerned that no one would know that she was Rapunzel because her hair isn't long enough so she settled for curling it just to be fancy.

We tried to make it to Norah and Eli's house before it got dark, but we were too late, so this was the best picture of the four little trick or treaters.

We worked our way up and down Norah and Eli's street before parting ways to go back and hand out candy at our house.  I think that this might have been their favorite part.  When Cate would see people at the end of the block, she would ride her big wheel (in full wedding dress Rapunzel garb) to the end of the driveway and shout, "Caaaaandy over heeeeere!"  Timmy got in on the act and just jumped up and down at the end of the driveway yelling, "Paaarty over heeere!" After going through seven bags of candy, we called it a night and both Woody and Rapunzel had a very long sleep!