Let the Holidays Begin!

I just LOVE this time of year! Halloween marks the beginning of the holiday season and I get so excited for all the different things coming up. We had a wonderful Halloween this year. Of course we had the Witches Night Out, then carving pumpkins as a family, Trunk or Treat/ward party, and Trick-or-Treating. Hallie thought carving pumpkins was great. She especially loved the guts and made sure to get her hands in as much of that as possible.

Devin and I are no professionals at the pumpkin carving. He has much more skill than I do, and given time could probably come up with something pretty awesome, but we were sort of on a time crunch. I am sure you can tell which one is his anyway...
Hallie is really into looking at herself on the camera, so its pretty easy to convince her to pose for pictures so that she can look at them. I told her to put her head by the pumpkin and she did so, quite literally, repeatedly for each picture.

Again...posing with the pumpkin on the porch. She woke up during the night that night and wanted to check on the pumpkins outside. Don't worry, I put her right back to bed. She checked on them first thing in the morning though.

We celebrated Halloween yesterday. She loved her puppy costume that my mom got her, though she didn't want to keep the hood on at all times. Oh well.

She also insisted upon wearing a black and white necklace that I have because it matches. I don't know too many Dalmatians who wear jewelry, but we went with it anyway.
Our first activity was to go with some ward members to trick or treat down-town. Hals is a hit with all their kids so she ran with them the whole time and I got stuck pushing the empty stroller. Awesome. We had a great time. Little did I know that Provo does this...but some places give away some pretty awesome candy! The jewelry store gives full size candy bars plus a coupon for the moms for something from the store. Ours is $50 off. Some the other kids got were free watch batteries, etc. We will have to hit that up again next year!
Next, we attended the ward party and Trunk or Treat. They had all sorts of activities for kids and since it was pouring outside, the Trunk or Treat consisted of classrooms decorated and people handing out candy in doorways. Works for me.
Devin was working this whole time, but soon came home and was able to take Hallie to about 5 houses across the street from us Trick or Treating just so he could have some fun with her too. We only had maybe 10 trick or treaters, which is really lame because I bought two huge bags of candy, thinking I would get rid of it all easily. NOT! Guess who is eating it all now??


I was a pirate if you can't tell. :) The rest of my costume is not visible, but it was all homemade and items around the house, so you can imagine how amazing it was. Devin was a soccer player/basketball player/some sports star. He had to dress up for work and that is what he came up with. Super creative, I know.
Here are Hallie and Dev headed down the driveway for their few houses of Trick or Treating.

Happy Halloween everyone! We hope it was fun and safe! And yay for the next few months of continued holiday goodness.