Halloween 2015

Halloween, wha?

The world has quickly moved on to Thanksgiving Christmas already (just look around every shopping store and coffee shop!), but I couldn't let the holiday pass by without documenting it here.

The kids and I spent Halloween in Nebraska last weekend. Andi was traveling for work and I figured if we couldn't celebrate with him, going "home" to Nebraska to be with my family was the next best thing. Tory and Aden had such a fun time dressing up to trick-or-treat with their cousins Brooke and Neeley.

Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, so we spent most of the day watching Nebraska football as a family and playing countless rounds of Halloween Bingo. I printed these free Bingo game boards and used mini marshmallows for game pieces, and everyone had such a fun time playing together around the kitchen table. Neeley (age 3) was a little young to grasp the game concept, but she still had fun bopping up to the table every once in a while to steal a few marshmallows to eat. Tory (age 4) and Brooke (age 8) loved the game, and the girls played for hours with my mom, sister and I. Tory insisted on being the caller most of the time, and we all laughed and laughed listening to her yell out the game pieces in her cute little voice.

My mom made homemade chili and cornbread for dinner, and my brother Adam and his girlfriend Carley joined us. Everyone ate together and then hit the streets for trick-or-treating in my parent's neighborhood. My cousin Jes and her husband Merrill stopped by with their daughter Finleigh too.

L to R: Neeley as a butterfly; Brooke as a Nebraska cheerleader, Finleigh as Minnie Mouse, Tory as Princess Aurora and Aden as Elmo. Getting all five of them to look at the camera at once was basically impossible.

The adults were good sports about dressing up, too. Adam and Carley put on some extra props I brought along for Tory and Aden (a cape and superhero mask; a pink tutu and glow-in-the-dark headband). My sister Ashley went as a Publisher's Clearinghouse prize winner and I dressed up as a paper doll that I made out of a cardboard box and wrapping paper.

Ashley is such a character, so she was in full costume all evening. "Hot damn, we won!" she told her husband Jason. He dressed up for Halloween as Joe Dirt. Those two are quite the pair!

My parents let us dress them up, too. My mom went as "Candy Corn" (her first name is Candy) and my dad went as "Al-owl" (his first name is Al). We pinned pictures of an owl and corn to each of their shirts, respectively.

The kiddos trick-or-treated on my parent's street, then we drove across town to my Aunt Cheri's house to spend the remainder of the evening. Halloween is my Uncle Norm's favorite holiday, and he goes all out to celebrate. He dressed up as Superman this year, and handed out glow sticks and king-size boxes of candy to all their trick-or-treaters. He kept track of their visitors by graphing them in 15 minute increments. This year, they had 174 trick-or-treaters before 8:30pm!

Ashley and I took the girls around to a few more houses in Norm and Cheri's neighborhood before calling it a night ourselves. Aden was well over trick-or-treating by this point, so he stayed back at the house with my parents (aka: Elmo had a major meltdown and decided to go back to being regular ol' Aden).

We were home and in bed by 10pm, which is exactly how I prefer celebrating Halloween these days.

The great thing abut traveling for Halloween is, I left all our candy with my sister in Nebraska. We have zero pieces of candy laying around our cupboards at home and while everyone complains about (or delights in) eating their children's candy loot, I'm happily dreaming of Thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pie.

Bring on the winter holidays!