happy ... well - I wouldn't go THAT far!

The truth is, every time I hear "happy halloween" I still cringe inside! As I mentioned before, though, I've eased up quite a bit - last year was our first year to dress up and this year we added trick-or-treating (though I was sure to tell the kids, it's a year by year thing and it could change again)!

Now, you may notice a certain adorable little someone seems absent ... have no fear - he was there and thoroughly enjoyed the outing, here's the story:

Everyone was all dressed up, make-up applied (this was only for our vampire), and excited as ever ... I convinced Liam to quickly put up his purple hood (he really doesn't like it) so we could get the full Buzz affect in a photo - and that's when it happened! As so often happens, for some reason I don't pay attention to the little picture of a battery on the screen of my camera - and so it seems as though it just goes dead out of nowhere, I never realize it needs charged until I go to take a pic and it won't work. That's precisely what happened. Here was my sweet little Buzz all happy and cooperating for a photo and the camera would not snap. I had no idea where my old point and shoot was, so I had to resort to the video camera - which is so poor quality (worse than the point & shoot) it's ridiculous in comparison to the video quality! Anyway, it was that or nothing - first I videotaped my Buzz, and then proceeded to take photos of my little pumpkin, my little batman, and my vampire ... and completely forgot to return to Buzz. Hopefully between having written this down and having video I will still always remember the huge smile on his face when I attempted to take his picture!

After all that, we met up with our friends and got going! We made it around our block before deciding that was far enough for Zoey - it was so windy and cold (it actually warmed up later, go figure). So me, my friend, and all our kiddos (minus Zoey) continued on. After a while her hubby was able to take a break from work and he joined us as well! We did all the streets over near our house (the ones off our "main" road) ... the kids had so much fun! Liam was too cute saying "chrick er chreat" and then "thank you"! At that point we headed toward home, our friends had to leave - but we decided to drop Liam off and head out in the van to see if we could find a few more houses still handing out candy! We did! Then we came home and Annicka & Jericho each got to eat one candy. Then, of course, it was bed time.

We certainly did have fun. Annicka was especially freaked out by the houses that were really into it - to the point that she hesitated until the younger kids ran past her! There were a few that Liam didn't like, too ... Jericho didn't care at all! We got a TON of candy - seriously - I don't know if I've ever seen so much candy in a home (not to mention the other little gifts, some of which aren't pictured - like the McDonalds toys!)! I sorted it all out this morning and even took a pic - you know I had to!

Hope everyone else who participates had a fun and safe evening!

Now for the real fun ... I'm SO excited for the holidays coming up - my parents are coming for Annicka's birthday and Thanksgiving! Then it's my most favorite: Christmas!!!