Halloween 2009

So... Halloween was a few weeks ago. But Leif promised a recap full of photos, so here it is!

This year I was in no mood to make a Halloween costume. I'm too cheap to buy one (because, who really pays $30 for a costume?!), and Robert wasn't volunteering. =D So I bribed Ellie into wearing one of her existing dress up outfits as a Halloween costume. She chose the purple fairy costume Grammee gave her for Christmas one year. How did I bribe her, you ask? Well, I told her that if she went as a fairy, I would put glitter all over her body and she could be sparkly. Every 3 year old girl's dream! It was perfect.

Of course, when people asked what she was going to be for Halloween, she told them she was going to be a princess with glitter all over her bottom. Eh, close enough.

So I armed myself with some glitter hair spray and Mary Kay Shimmeriffic Body Powder and went to work, making our little dress-up girl into an enchanted fairy. Here she is in all her sparkly glory...

And, in a nice change of pace from most Montana Halloweens, we had a warm day, so Ellie didn't even need to put on a snowsuit to go trick or treating! Since the inside light wasn't cooperating for pictures, Leif and Ellie trekked out to the back yard for a few snapshots. Of course, once the light started cooperating, Ellie stopped, so here's the best of what we got:

And, of course, a couple closeups of the sparkly hair...

Because we got invited to a couple Halloween parties this year, we decided not to have one of our own. I took Eliana to a kids' party at the Palmer-Warner home and she had a great time. She spent half of it playing by herself instead of with the other kids, but she had a great time. =D

After going to the Halloween party, Leif took Eliana and met up with the Richters and Gravings for some trick-or-treating. Ellie was very excited to get to go trick-or-treating with her friends!

After trick-or-treating, Leif took Eliana to another Halloween party while I stayed home and distributed candy to the kids who came by our house.

Ellie got quite a bit of loot, half of which was chocolate or caramel she couldn't have. We had fun separating the candy, though, and she got a few pieces each day from the "pure sugar" stash. She stretched her candy out for a little over a week, which I thought was pretty good!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Tonight we had a Halloween party at our house. It was mass chaos, really, but it was a lot of fun. 4 families, 8 kids. We had dinner together and then the dads took the kiddos trick-or-treating while us moms stayed back and passed out candy to the kids who stopped by our house. We had a lot of trick-or-treaters this year! I made up 50 goodie bags for the kids and they were all gone in like 45 minutes! Good thing Stephanie brought an extra Costco bag of candy to the party! A glimpse of the mass chaos...

Ellie wore a princess costume made by her Uncle Robert. Isn't she just the cutest little princess ever??

I tried putting some fake hair on her head so she would have some little braids and curls sticking out of the bottom of her princess hat, but she wasn't too keen on the fake hair idea. She was, however, excited about wearing the sparkly white eyeshadow I let her wear for the first time.

She was also excited about dressing up and playing outside with Mommom and Daddy.

Eventually Ellie let Mommy do her hair and put her princess hat on.

After we ate dinner at the party it was time for trick-or-treating! Ellie was ready to go!

Off to go trick-or-treating with Daddy!!

Amazingly, she kept her hat on the entire time they were trick-or-treating. I don't know how many houses they stopped at, but the kids came back with plenty of candy! Here they are heading back to the house...

"Look, Mommom! They gave me CANDY!!"

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween!