Halloween 2012

We had a pretty great Halloween this year.  I remedied a childhood oversight of never seeing The Nightmare Before Christmas (kind of overrated, I thought) and we managed to fit in all of the essential Halloween activities.  Every year, as the girls get older, we're able to have more fun with them, and this year was no exception.  They had a great time in all of our family activities, and were really able to appreciate the anticipation of the day.

It's just not Halloween until you carve a jack o'lantern.  When we went to the pumpkin patch earlier this month, the girls decided that a tall, skinny pumpkin would be just right for the face we were going to carve into ours this year.

Scooping out the guts - then we roasted the seeds.  Yum!

The finished product!  We'd been talking about doing a happy face for almost a week, and all of a sudden Nora decided that she wanted to do a scary face.  So we compromised on a silly face, and everyone ended up happy.

Our jack o'lantern and Adam's favorite knife



All lit up on Halloween night

One of my favorite traditions is making Halloween cookies.  I really like it because we combine my tradition of making sugar cookies every year with Adam's tradition of frosting instead of sugaring the cookies and make it our own by doing it at Halloween instead of Christmas.  This year, the girls and I made the cookies the day before Halloween so that we could take them to share when we visited Adam at the office.  Here they are, about to eat the first cookies after we finished frosting them.  Abby told me today that they were just helping me taste them to make sure they were good before we gave them to other people.

Abby's preschool celebrates Halloween by having the kids dress up and parade around the parents to show off their costumes and get treats.  Last year I felt like a slacker for just handing out candy bars since so many parents made little treat bags, so this year I stepped it up (thanks Pinterest!) and made little mummy treat holders for the kids.

Is that Rapunzel and Snow White?  How did the Disney princesses end up in Champaign?

The girls were pretty excited to start the costume parade.  The girl next to Abby is her friend, Alice, dressed as Olivia the pig.

During the parade.  The girl at the very beginning of the video is Leah, one of Abby's best friends.  She's a flapper Rapunzel, so it was almost like they had the same costume.  It was very exciting.

Halloween morning, the girls and I headed in to Adam's office to visit/show off/share cookies.  They were pretty excited - mostly to be able to wear their costumes again, but we'll pretend it was to see everyone that Dad works with.

Sharing cookies

The main event!  Halloween evening we had an early dinner so that we could head out trick-or-treating right at 6:00, the beginning of the official trick-or-treating hours.  The girls were so excited, we could hardly get them to stand still for a picture.  Even then, we couldn't get Abby to stop telling us how great it was going to be to go to all the houses and get some candy.

They did a great job trick-or-treating.  Poor Nora got scared by a couple of friendly dogs who tried to come out when the doors were opened, but other than that we had a great time.  We only stayed out for about half an hour since it was so chilly, but you wouldn't know that from the size of their haul!

da da danta danta da da Circus!

All week long Kristin has been singing theme song from Madagascar 3, 'da da danta danta da da - circus!', so suffice it to say the girls were very excited to go to the circus today. Abby actually got a little confused and thought we were going yesterday and was more than a little disappointed to find out otherwise. Dad on the other hand kept telling Mom, 'Stop singing that circus song right before bed and then expecting everyone to go right to sleep.' Again, by the time Saturday rolled around we were all ready to go.

As any occasion involving Dad is wont to do, we started the day off with a fancy breakfast. We had popcorn and a new dad creation called a 'circus pancake', which Abby informed me was a actually a doughnut. You'd think that fact that I made it would be enough to establish what it was but you'd be wrong. After breakfast I overheard the two of them re-enacting breakfast only this time Abby was informing the Barbies that they were actually having a giant doughnut not a pancake.

Hamming it up here ...

Anyway, after some morning playing it was finally time to make the trip.

A little too excited for our own good here.


At least one of us is having a great time.

Next up were the acts, there were quite a few over the two hours we were there. While none of them photographed super well we have a few highlights.

We started off with horses and camels.


The ring dancers were Mom's favorite.


Nora was thoroughly un-impressed by the acrobatics.




Not sure what to call this one but it was my favorite.




Everyone was having a great time by intermission.






The elephants were Nora's favorite. On the way home Abby said she might grow up to be a clown in the circus someday (Aunt Jenn will be thrilled). Nora said she would definitely grow up to be an elephant.


And finally, the motorcycle ball of doom.

All in all we had a great time. We couldn't have asked for more from the girls and I think we made quite the memory.