This is Halloween, This Is Halloween

That was Lorelai and her Kinderchoir class performing "BOO!" at the Sahuarita Stake Talent Show (she's the princess in blue on the left--you know, the one wiggling in excitement. Afterwards, she was disappointed she only got to sing "one" song. There'll be other chances, kid).

But that was just the beginning of our 2010 Halloween season. And, like every Halloween, it's not complete unless you've got a few pumpkins laying around. So, off we went!

This year, we traveled to Buckelew Farms (about 40 minutes west of Tucson) to select our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. There was a lot to do there, including a craft fair, food & drink, a hay bale mountain, and a new corn maze (you can see the maze in the background of the picture above. I've never seen a corn maze where the corn was STILL GROWING. Only in AZ, I guess). After looking around a bit, we hitched a ride in the hay wagon and drove out to the pumpkin patch:

Once we got to the pumpkin patch, it didn't take long for the girls to pick out their pumpkins. They were blessedly small (and thus, easier to carry back to the car!)

What a lovely pose! For some reason, Lorelai likes to do the "potrait studio" beauty pose for every photo I take (head tilted, hands clasped together like so). She is quite the ham.

So nice of Buckelew Farms to drive us back to the entrance with our pumpkins!

A few days later, for Family Home Evening, it was carving time...Daddy did the honors.

First, tracing a face on each pumpkin...and then attacking them with the knife!

The finished products; don't they look cute on our porch!

Other Halloween-related activities included a special trick-or-treat storytime at the local library. Celeste attended in costume!

The kids all weaved between bookshelves, while library employees waited at key junctures, handing out Halloween stickers & jewelry. Cute!!

That same night, our ward had their annual Trunk or Treat, complete with a kids' fair.

Fishing for prizes...

...and a cakewalk were a few of the activities. Then, it was outside to the dark, chilly parking lot, for trunk-or-treating and hot chocolate!

A couple of days later, it was party time at Lorelai's school!

This featured a costume parade that included the whole school! It was fun to see all the neat costumes...

...including those of the younger siblings, like Celeste and this adorable luchadora who befriended her briefly.

That night was another school-related activity--it was Great Expectations Academy's first ever Halloween Carnival, with treats, games, & prizes! All the kids went in costume & had a wonderful time.


Here's one last look at our girls' costumes this year:

Lorelai was Cinderella--a convenient choice, since we had this dress in our dress-up clothing drawer already;

Celeste also wanted in on the Disney Princess action; she went as Snow White, complete with a ridiculously huge hair bow I made myself;

and as for Aurora, she got her turn in our go-to baby Halloween costume; this lovely yellow duck get-up that quacks when you squeeze it! It was a little worn, and truth to tell Aurora didn't love the hood too much, but it mostly worked out. Random observation: doesn't Aurora have gorgeous blue eyes?

Since Halloween was on a Sunday this year, we decided to do our trick-or-treating on Saturday night. Luckily, we had many ward members work together on this, so the kids had places to go. We weren't originally going to hand out candy on Sunday night, but we had SO MUCH left over from all these activities that we gave in and decided to give it away. We ended up having lots of trick-or-treaters this year, so in the end, just about all the candy was given away! Our waistlines were relieved.

That about does it for the Barretts' 2010 Halloween. Is it my imagination, or does this holiday get more hectic every year? I love Halloween, but I am also relieved it's over & happy to move on to the more emotionally meaningful holidays this year (except that we'll be in Disneyland for one of them, so I'm not sure it counts as "emotionally meaningful" this year :) ). See you all next time!