Halloween Events

Whew! Between various holiday activities and quite a bit of sickness in our family lately, I've gotten a bit behind on my blogging. I'll pick up where I left off last year somewhere... Halloween! :)

For the past 5 years, I've been encouraging Jaden and Cody to dress thematically for Halloween-- Curious George and the Man with the Yellow Hat, Mario and Luigi, Cowboys and Indians... This year, I was excited about including Adley in the thematic mix too, so (as always, with the help of Pinterest) I brainstormed some fun ideas: football players & cheerleader, Lego minifigs and Lego piece, Angry Birds and Piggie, a trio of Rock, Paper and Scissors (hilarious!), and (my personal favorite) Peter Pan, Hook, and Tinkerbell. 

Unfortunately, my ideas were met with a definitive "no thank you" (at least they were polite about it, I guess). While I was a little bummed to see the era of matching costumes come to an end, I also knew it was important to encourage Jaden and Cody's independence too. And really, Halloween IS supposed to be all for the kids anyway, right? :) Jaden and Cody settled upon their ideas fairly quickly-- a rainbow fish for Jaden...

and an alligator for Cody.

I pieced together various Pinterest ideas for both of their costumes and was pleased with the final results. I worked on the costumes over the course of a couple weeks whenever I could sneak in some time in the evening. Jaden and Cody loved seeing their costumes come together a little bit at a time, and it was fun for me to see their growing excitement. When our first Halloween activity finally came, both boys couldn't wait to wear their costumes.

 I fell in love with this Pinterest idea for Adley right away-- a gumball machine!! So stinkin' adorable. The costume was very easy to make too-- double bonus!

And here's my cute threesome all together:

The first Halloween event that we participated in was our church's Trunk or Treat that Jason organizes. It's always so fun seeing the creative ways that our church members decorate their cars.

 

Adley didn't participate in the candy collection this year, but I'm sure she will be gung-ho for it next year!

Chelsea joined us for the evening, too, with her little dinosaur (Noah) and monkey (Isaiah). It was a perfect weather evening for candy collecting! 

A few days before Halloween, Jaden, Cody, and Adley joined their Walquist-side cousins for a trick or treating event in Grammy and Papa's neighborhood. We loved seeing all of the cousins' costumes and getting a chance (for the first time ever!) to trick or treat all together.

I didn't get any pictures of the actual trunk or treat part of this event since Jaden and Cody surprisingly weren't all that interested in getting candy. The boys only visited a handful of trunks to get candy and then asked to move on to the other activities. They loved the inflatables...

...and were especially interested in getting cotton candy. Various adult family members had to take turns waiting in line quite a while for this treat, but we couldn't complain too much since it was free!

This is just a random shot of Daddy, Adley, and Grammy waiting in line for cotton candy, but I had to include it since it showcases one of Adley's new favorite things-- grabbing onto Daddy or Mommy's sweatshirt/jacket drawstrings and chewing on them. I love how Aunt Sarah always captures these quirky everyday moments in her photos! 

Halfway through the event, they held a (fairly informal) costume contest, so I decided to enter Adley. On my way towards the stage, a lady stopped me to comment on how cute Adley looked and asked if she could take a picture. Turned out that this lady was one of the costume judges! So, when they gave out prizes (bags of candy for the top 3 in the 0-3 year old age group), this same lady came right up to us and said, "And of course, you!" to Adley. Here's our little costume-contest winner with her bag of candy and her adoring cousin Ryan. :) 

One of the last things we did at this event was ride the little train-- a highlight for most of the cousins.

Again, it was such a lovely fall evening to be outside! We love being able to easily attend events like these with family members, too.

Our last event was trick-or-treating on actual Halloween night. Unfortunately, this night was not so great weather-wise. We were getting lots of rain! The dreary weather didn't stop our crew, though. We took our umbrellas and braved the rain to stop at 12-15 homes before the boys were ready to return home. Because of the weather, not as many kids were out, and many homeowners were giving out HUGE handfuls of candy. So even though we weren't out long, Cody and Jaden got some hefty buckets full of candy that night!

And that's it for our Halloween 2017!