Halloween Night Trick or Treating

Once we were done at Cameron's party, we went back to our house to pick up our costumes, pumpkins and trick or treat baskets.  As we do every year, we headed over to Nana and Poppa's to go trick or treating.  Since we are the only one on our street, it probably wouldn't be too fun to go trick or treating here!

Cameron and Leah on Nana and Poppa's porch.  We brought our pumpkins over to their house too so that someone other than just our family could enjoy them.  It turned out to be a good move because Nana and Poppa's pumpkin was eaten by a squirrel so they didn't have one!

Heading up to the first house

Ding dong!

Next house

They took turns ringing the doorbells, although Cam did more than Leah cause some of them she couldn't reach

Leah and Poppa heading to the next house

Cute little Winnie the Pooh bumblebee

Cameron checking out the cool decorations at the next door neighbor's house

More trick-or-treats

Along the way we found Cookie Monster!

Cameron got his picture taken with Cookie Monster; Leah didn't want ANYTHING to do with him.  She would barely even wave to Cookie, she was too scared.

The kids got tired about half way around the block and were ready to go back.  They had enough candy so we had no problem with heading back.

Our last house of the night is always Nana and Poppa's.  The kids think it is hilarious that Poppa pretends not to know who they are when he opens the door.

Cameron with his haul, neatly organized by candy type.

Leah with her candy

 They were each allowed to have one piece of candy that night.  Cam picked a ring pop.

Leah went with smarties.

The kids had another fun Halloween!

Cameron and Leah's Halloween Parades

On Halloween, the kids both had lots of fun festivities and parties to keep them busy.  In the morning was Cameron's kindergarten parade and Halloween party.  The kindergarteners parade around the entire school while the older kids sit out in the hall and watch and wave.  It is very cute.

Cameron in his classroom, lined up and ready to parade

Cameron's teacher, Mrs. Blackburn, heads up the line

 Cameron as Spiderman, parading through the school

Cameron's class - as you can see he is not too happy.  We found out later that he thought all of the other kids who were watching the parade were laughing at them, because they were smiling and laughing at the cuteness.  He assumed the other kids were laughing and making fun of him, and was very upset over it.  Poor monkey!  Once we explained that the other kids were smiling and happy to see how cute the kindergarteners were, he felt much better and enjoyed the rest of his party.

That afternoon was the Sweetheart Daycare (Leah's school) and YMCA KinderKids (Cameron's afternoon school) Halloween parades.  Lucky for us, the parades were all at the same time in the YMCA gym, which worked out perfectly.

Cam's class paraded first - you can see SpiderCam in the middle of the line there.

Still feeling a little tentative about parading

And here comes Leah!  She had about 20 costumes to pick from and of course she picked the Tinkerbell dress that was indecently short.  We added green shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt underneath it, then she was all set and LOVED her costume.

Leah liked parading, she was waving to everyone.

Cam on another time around

And here comes happy Leah again

Leah was excited that Nana came to watch the parade!

Trying to get a picture of Cameron and Leah together - Leah was not very interested in that.

After the parade, Leah went back to her room for a party while Cameron went back to his room for his party.  Leah got a yummy cookie and some milk for her special Halloween treat.

YUM!

Cameron in his classroom, partaking in some of the yummy treats they got.

When Leah's party was done, she came to join Cameron in his room for his party.  We tried again to take a picture of them together, but Leah still wasn't interested.

She wanted to eat some of Cameron's snacks and check out his treat bag instead.

Finally, a halfway decent picture.

Carving Pumpkins

The night before Halloween we finally got around to carving our pumpkins.  We put them inside in the morning so that we wouldn't be scooping frozen pumpkin guts that night!  It worked out great.

Cameron was not a big fan of digging the guts out of his pumpkin.  He thought it was slimy and kind of yucky.  Daddy ended up doing most of the guts removal from Cameron's pumpkin.

Leah, on the other hand, had no issues with the pumpkin guts.

She was a great helper - Mama would scrape the edges of the pumpkin and then Leah would scoop out the guts.

She loved how squishy and slimy it felt!

Up to her shoulder in pumpkiny-gutty-goodness!

Leah described how she wanted her pumpkin's face to look, then I drew her several options for each face part, she picked the one she liked the best, and I carved it for her.

Cameron showing Tim what he wanted the mouth of his pumpkin to look like.  Cam also drew out his entire face and then Tim carved it for him.

Cam carved a few of the pieces himself, but the pumpkins were so thick this year that it was even difficult for Tim and I to do.

Leah's finished pumpkin, complete with "kitty cat eyes," "big lips," and eyelashes, per Leah's requests.

Cam's finished pumpkin - he drew a "mean face" pumpkin for Tim to carve

 Finished, lit-up pumpkins!

Cute kiddos happy with their pumpkins

With their pumpkins outside

It was pitch black outside, so each time Tim took one of these pictures it was completely dark, then lit by the flash for a second.  We thought it was hilarious that Leah decided to make a goofy face for one of the pictures!

Good-Bye Leah's Rat Tail

Leah's hair grew long pretty quickly, but only in the middle of the back of her head.  That left her with what looked kind of like a rat tail from the 1980s.  I kept hoping that the rest would catch up and even out, but that never happened.  Instead, her rat tail just grew longer and more pronounced.  It made it tricky to do pigtails cause those long pieces were always crazy.  After putting it off and putting it off, I finally decided to cut her rat tail off.  The main decider was seeing a few of the pictures from Europe - it looked like i had purposely given my baby a rat tail haircut, and that just wouldn't do!

First I wet and combed out her hair.  You can see how much longer the rat tail section is!

Another view of the rat tail and surrounding tail - pretty crazy what a difference in length there is!

The cut!

Fringing out the ends to make it look a bit more natural

Presenting Leah with her rat tail

Leah showing off her rat tail 

The final product - much more even!