halloween with the d's

to me, there's nothing more depressing than expired holiday decor... you know, decorations still up post-holiday. it's amazing to me how instantaneously those festive decorations lose their magic once the holiday has passed. and so i feel the same with a past due blog post, so before it gets too late, i better post about our halloween celebrations.

the carving:

can i be honest with you real quick? truth is, we took this picture so that emaline, when she was older, would see that she was around for the family carving festivities, but in reality it was bedtime and besides sharp knives don't mix well with small children, so off to bed she went. sorry em's... you wouldn't have had fun anyways. in fact, about 10 minutes into the carving ava lost interest and sat at the table playing with some toys and eating some grapes instead.

bryce lost himself in complete carving concentration while i rinsed and sorted through the pumpkin goop, preparing the seeds for roasting. i may or may not have over did it with the butter and they may or may not have been the most delicious batch i've tasted.

bryce was pretty proud of his hard work, and i was a pretty impressed myself.

the party:

freak fest '09

this year we decided to have a little halloween party with just some of our close friends. every year, we go to a gathering with some of our neighborhood/church friends {see next section}, so this year, we wanted to get together with some of our non-church friends as well. we sent the kids off to grandma and papa's for the night (thanks mom and dad!) and party'd it up. we had a great time playing games, eating junk and laughing it up.

look at how much fun our guests were having...

no, really they were having fun, see?

we had a costume contest as well. i regret not photographing the winners with their trophies, but i do not regret any of my behavior the rest of the night.

our family costumes were a little obstructive, so we went with something else for the party, and the above pic is the only documentation of our costumes. everyone had a hard time figuring out what we were.

i'll let you guess...

time's up:

the black-eyed p's.

p's on our shirts, black eyes... get it?

the hit of the party was jaime and jason who showed up as the hosts: bryce and diana. they not only went home with the funniest costume trophy, but the tarnished "best overall" trophy cup as well. good work friends.

halloween night:

each year our church hosts a little halloween gathering in the park for the neighborhood. all are welcome and invited, and there's usually a pretty good turn out. we enjoy chili and corn bread, games, a bounce castle and of course a little socializing as well. i love to walk around and see everyone's costumes. i like to have some sort of theme to go along with our family costumes. this year, we were characters from toy story. toy story is one of ava's all-time favorite movies, so you can imagine her excitement when she was able to dress up as her beloved jessie. my favorite was her "yee-haw!" that accompanied the costume. she certainly had that nailed down. i made her hat and wig then purchased the rest of her costume. she loved dressing up in it.

emaline went as the alien squeeze toy. my favorite part of her costume was the purple neck brace, er, i mean collar, that i made. not once did she try and pull off any of her costume. the girl knew she looked cute and worked the costume. bryce and i were cracking up as she trucked along in her alien feet slippers and her hood that sporadically slid down on her face. we couldn't believe she never tried to rip anything off.

bryce insisted on going as a toy army man. his costume took the most work out of all of ours, but somehow he managed to pull it off. no one recognized him and many thought it was a pretty clever costume. i doubted you bryce, but you proved me wrong, well done babe.

and then there was me. i had many different ideas that i kept bouncing back and forth of what i could be, but i ended up going with an etch-a-sketch. i can't tell you how many times little kids kept coming up and trying to turn the knobs on my costume. what made me laugh was how disappointed they were when they realized they didn't really work. sorry kids.

and here we are all together. i'll be honest, our costumes turned out better than i thought they would.

the night ended with buckets filled with candy and happy sugar high kids with sticky faces and hands. we visited with bryce's and my parents and did a little trick or treating on their streets, then called it a night. when the kids were finally in bed, it was close to ten and bryce and i were ready to crash. it was such a fun weekend and a happy halloween, indeed.