Halloween

Our Halloween started off with a fun costume parade at Olivia's school.

Her class afterwards.

It was just our little family this year trick or treating.  We did our yearly pumpkin pizza and pumpkin juice (Fanta) before heading out the door.  Costumes were actually pretty easy this year.  Olivia wanted to be what Kaitlyn was last year, easy.  Abby wanted to be a greek goddess - just ordered a pretty costume online.  Kaitlyn decided on Darth Vader girl once she saw the costume at Party City.  And a friend loaned us a light up red light saber!  I wanted Alec to go as a minion but didn't like the one costume I found and I was too lazy to make one.  While shopping at Costco I saw their cute fireman costumes and picked one out for Alec thinking he'd love it.  Any time Alec walked by the costume he'd go "we-new" and point but when it came to wearing it, that was a different story.

Todd was able to get Alec half dressed and I called it good enough.

 With a bribe of a sucker Alec stood in a picture with his sisters.

 Alec stayed in the stroller halfway down the street but once we came to a house with a dog, out he came and he walked the rest of the night.  Plus grabbing a piece of candy to eat every now and then helped.  Olivia was the first one to claim she was tired and done for the night.  We hadn't even been out for an hour yet.  Kaitlyn decided she wanted to hand out candy and Abby left with a friend and went around for another hour and came home with so much loot!  Too sad for them we do a parent tax and let them only keep about 30 pieces.  The rest go into a big bowl for everyone.  Abby was upset that she did all that work to get candy and had to give most of it up.  I did sneak some more into her bowl later.
The kids had a lot of fun and enjoyed the holiday.

 Olivia put a post it saying "Olivia Yost candy" on her bowl.

 Off they go!

 Our pumpkins this year:  Pegasus (drawn by Abby), Darth Vader, Hello Kitty, and Thomas the Train 

Candy thieves story for this year:  As soon as we left, we were standing at our neighbors house, we saw a huge group of boys go up to our door.  I stood and watched them because I thought that they'd probably clear us out of our candy.  As they ran past us, I recognized one of the boys and mentioned that I hope they left candy for others because I knew their moms and who they were.  Sure enough, the next group of kids walks up, looks in the bowl, and turns around and walks away.  The boys took everything.  I took the kids trick or treating and Todd went looking for the group.  He didn't go far because they traveled fast - they just hit the houses that left candy out because we were not to far behind them.  So Todd went back home to pass out our backup candy.  Also, my neighbor later told me she was near the group and heard the boys talking about only going to the houses that were empty.

I had texted the boy's mom that I knew.  Poor kid.  He was the only one I  truly knew but I knew his mom would let the other parents know.  I felt like a tattle tale but if that were my kid, I'd want to know and I'd make them return ALL their candy to the house.  Later, one of the brothers came up to apologize and bring a handful of candy back, I mentioned to him that you never know who's watching you so you have to watch your actions.  Hopefully they learned a lesson.