The Halloween celebrations were an ongoing event at our house this October! First, Elora and I got to work making some Halloween decorations...mostly because all the neighbors had stuff in their windows, and we didn't want to be left out. Nothing too exciting, but Elora had a fun afternoon being creative with mommy. Guess which ones are mine?

We had our annual pumpkin carving; I think each year Joseph and I are getting less and less creative in our own attempts because we have to spend most of the time helping the kids. But they have a great time...even when Elora broke two carving knives in a row:

The finished creations. Mine is the cool whistling one at the top!:

Then last Tuesday, one of my neighbors was awesome enough to plan a little party for all the kids in our apartment complex. Elora had a great time, though I think Josh wasn't sure what was going on. Jonah wasn't too happy with the outfit I put him in for the occasion..probably because it was Elora's as a baby too!

Everyone looked so cool in their costumes:

So they had a costume show-off time! Here is Elora in her oh so fancy mermaid costume. (Yes, I made it with no pattern, how could you tell :)) Hey, at least the bottom turned out pretty good!

Then they each picked partners and wrapped each other up like mummies. One of the moms kind of helped of course. Again, Josh wasn't really participating in this part, but later, he walked out of the bathroom with a whole handful of tp, still hooked to the holder! Guess he thought it was his turn.

This was one of the very few times I saw Josh interacting with the other kids. It was so funny, he just randomly turned to the kid next to him, and roared at him! This was at the beginning of the roar, so the kid is kind of smiling at him in a friendly way.....

but by the end, they were like, "Okay, weird kid, don't look at him." Poor, strange child. Maybe its a defense mechanism he has when he's shy? Or maybe he had to do something tough around all these superheros and pirates, because he was dressed as a clown!

Elora really liked the hanging doughnuts and totally went at it when they said go, but Josh was kind of like, "Really? You want me to eat this with no hands? I don't think so." Once I got it down for him, he ate it just fine in the end.

The night before Halloween, there was a little carnival for all of married housing. It is kind of like the ones they have at elementary schools, but smaller, and in one room, and not nearly as exciting. At least from my perspective. Josh wouldn't sit up for a group picture, so here he is with Jonah before we left:

We got a group picture at the party. They really should've put the wall decorations lower, don't you think? And yes this is the best of the four pics we took. Blah.

Finally, it was Halloween day! We had the Trunk-or-Treat at the church as our first order of business. I guess people didn't know when it was, because they didn't have a huge turn out, and when we got there (only 1/2 hr into it) people were already packing up their candy to go! We were glad to see all the otehr kids. The little girls were all running away from the boys. They were trying to get Elora to run around with them, but she was totally oblivious. At one point, our six-year-old neighbor, Cameron, said, "Elora, you're the only girl not running away from me!" A girl after my own heart. Who cares what everyone else is doing, eat your doughnut in peace!

Josh was quite impressed with his haul, and stopped in the middle of the parkinglot to check it out:

Then on to the real trick or treating! We only went to the two neighborhoods we always visit, where our two other families from Washington live. Elora and Josh did much better than last year with saying "Trick-or-Treat", though I think Josh was still feeling shy around the people, and wondering why we didn't go inside each house.

and our little lion had a great first Halloween!