Halloween

I'm not sure they'd ever been trick-or-treating before.  In fact, I'm pretty sure they haven't.  In California, we always went to our church's enormous fall festival instead.  So... we started last night with a practice run at my parents' house.  The girls rang the doorbell and my daddy answered the door.  He made a big fuss over them (they weren't yet even wearing costumes), invited them in and handed out M & M's.  He made a big production over grabbing one fun size M&M's pkg, opening it up, and handing out individual M&Ms.  One for you....One for you....  The girls were thrilled.  Julia was shrieking with joy over the idea that Grandaddy was handing out M&Ms...even if it was one at a time.  :)

It only got better from there.  They walked across the street from my parents' to the St. Johns house and got candy.  We rushed home (it's now almost 7:00) and put costumes on to walk across the street to Mrs. Barnes' house and down to Ella's.  Four houses, nineteen pieces of candy (Grace counted) and we were done.  Perfect Halloween.  

I'm not into Halloween.  I'm not into scary things in general - especially now that I have three precious innocent little girls.  I don't like gory, bloody scary "decorations" at Target (or any other store).  I don't like ghosts or witches or goblins.  I don't like the idea of them and don't like the idea of introducing that darkness into my sweet girls' minds.  If you take away all that scary stuff, it's just a weird holiday that you dress up and eat lots of candy.  I don't want a lot of candy in my house (guess who eats it??).  But my girls are DEFINITELY into dress up.  Therefore, we trick-or-treated last night.  What's funny is that if you're really paying attention, you'll notice that Grace wore Shelby's costume from last year.  Shelby wore Grace's costume from last year.  Julia wore the same old pumpkin outfit that everybody wears at 2 years old.  :)  It wasn't supposed to work out that way, but in our haste to rush out last night, that's how it fell.  Everybody was happy.

And just so you don't think I'm a fuddy-dud mama (Ashley), we did plenty of Halloween celebrating.  Shelby dressed as a ladybug for school on Thursday.  Grace was a cheerleader all day at school on Friday.  I was in charge of Grace's class Halloween party.  We decorated cupcakes, made a craft and sang Halloween songs.  We carved pumpkins, made pumpkin cookies, went to the pumpkin patch, ate off pumpkin plates and wiped our faces with orange napkins.  Not bad for not really wanting to celebrate, huh??  :)  They weren't exactly Halloween deprived, though their mama talks a big game.  

Now moving on to Thanksgiving...