Happy Halloween!

Another giggly ghoulish October for the Brooks family record books.  I think the Halloween season lasts longer than the Christmas season in this house.  At least it feels like it does.  With house decorating, costume planning and prepping, school fall festivals, Halloween parties and parades and, finally, last but not least, a sugar filled night of trick or treating, the chaos fun seems to go on forever.  Halloween on a Saturday this year seemed to make it even more of a party.  Natalie had a soccer game early Halloween morning and her coaches asked the team to be there even earlier for a surprise; which turned out to be painting the girls' faces as zombie soccer players for their game.  Pretty fun.  And a little spooky.  So, as usual, we started November today a little sluggish!

Our kickoff to Halloween was our school Fall Carnival last weekend.  Super fun day for the girls:

 This would be a carnival game called Cow Pie Bingo.

It's as silly as it sounds.  The field is painted with a bingo grid,

the bingo squares are sold to hopeful parents, the cow arrives 

mid-morning and hangs out for a couple of hours, 

and when he inevitably poops, the square the 

cowpie lands on is the winner!  Funny.

 These mummy cupcakes were my midnight baking 

adventure that we donated to the Kindergarten cupcake walk.

One of my favorite parts about Halloween is decorating our house to look just spooky enough  (which is to say, more cutsie than spooky):

This year we had another family join us for pumpkin carving, hot spiced cider and dessert.  We had so much fun we want to make a tradition out of it.  The kids scooped the pumpkins and designed the faces and Corey got to work carving them.  They turned out so great.

Halloween day we spent getting our teal pumpkin ready to participate in the Teal Pumpkin Project sponsored by Food Allergy Research and Education to encourage people to offer non-food treats for kids with food allergies.  Hoping one day when we Trick or Treat there are more houses that participate.

And finally, finally, it was time to Trick or Treat.  Such a fun night meeting neighbors and bumping into school friends in the dark. We had a spider witch and a ballerina and they could not have looked cuter!

It's been a full and fun month!