Happy Halloween

We had such a fun night trick-or-treating! We started off the night going to all the houses in our cul-de-sac and chatting with all our neighbors- most of whom we hadn't met yet. By the third house Ginny had her routine down. I was very surprised. Hayden took a couple years to get comfortable with the trick-or-treating routine and to understand what he was supposed to do. Ginny took two houses. On the third house she walked right up, banged on the door and yelled "Eeeee". That's her version of "please". When they held the bowl of candy out for her she quickly took one piece, placed it in her bucket, then reached back for another! At every house she had to wave and say "bye". She was definitely an adorable little monster!

After our neighborhood we drove to the elementary school about a mile away and parked the car. Our friends had told us the neighborhood across the street from the school is the best place to trick-or-treat so we decided to meet them there. When we got there the place was packed! It was like something out of a movie. I've never lived in or been to a neighborhood that actually gets that many trick-or-treaters. There were kids running everywhere with big clumps going from door to door together. There is no way a car could have gotten down that street. It was just like a big block party! We met up with our friends and Hayden was excited to get to run around with Holly and her older brother Will. The kids quickly got the hang of things and just went at it all on their own with just a little direction from us. It was really fun to watch Hayden and Holly break out of their shy, mellow personalities and just start racing from door to door with big smiles on their faces! I tried to take a picture, but I they were just too fast and there were too many other kids around... I was a bit afraid I was going to lose them!

We were chatting with some other people who live on this street and they said when they moved in they were told to prepare to have enough candy for about 1,000 kids!!! A few houses had already run out of candy by 6:30! These houses went all out with crazy decorations. One house had even converted their garage into a fun little place to hang out, listen to creepy organ music with live singing!

After almost an hour of very energetic trick-or-treating from Ginny, she looked up at Dirk and said, "night night". Dirk picked her up and she fell asleep on his shoulder. So sweet! 

We made it home by about 7:30 and put the kids to bed. I promptly turned on our lights and started handing out candy to kids who stopped by our house. I'm thinking I should have put candy out while we were gone, because there were a lot more people wandering the neighborhood, but by the time we got home it was getting late for a school night. We ended up with tons of leftovers. I'll be better prepared next time!
So that was our fun Halloween night. I hope you all had a fun and safe night too!