Halloween

My goodness! It's almost Christmas and I am just getting to Halloween. I have a lot of catching up to do on my blog. Lucy seemed to change her mind about what she wanted to be for Halloween on a daily basis although the most oft requested costume was to be Princess Nausicaa. Due to my limited (read: non-existent) sewing skills, that just wasn't going to happen. Maybe if I had asked my mother way in advance, she could have come up with something but with her being in Japan and shipping costs, borrowing her sewing skills wasn't really an option either. My brother-in-law, Damian, even found a lady who would make a Nausicaa costume on Ebay but I was just going to take the path of least resistance - that is, using one of the many costumes that we already had. In this case, it was Lucy's cousin, Maya's old butterfly costume. I mostly just wanted something that would be warm.

Even though I didn't spend a cent on Lucy's Halloween costume, I still wanted to get some good mileage out of it. The way Halloween is set up these days, kids definitely rake the candy in. In mid-October, our church ward had its Trunk-or-Treat activity in the church parking lot. I was actually glad that they didn't do it on Halloween because I feel like Halloween is a community thing and it's so much better to go out to your neighbors' homes. But Lucy definitely didn't mind having the opportunity to pick up some candy earlier. We invited Emily, Jared, and Olive to join in on the fun (and free dinner afterward). We were late but the kids ended up getting more than enough candy in the limited time they had to run from vehicle to vehicle to get candy.

My mom did make Olive's super cute Totoro costume. 

Lucy chose a different costume to wear to preschool (pretty much a fancy dress she had so we will just say she was a princess) then did some indoor trick-or treating there during the day (her preschool is connected to the high school so I think that the students hand out candy?). On the actual Halloween evening, we were blessed with incredibly mild weather. This was our first Halloween in our own neighborhood (last year we were renovating the house and living with Brandon's brother, Damian so we just did trick-or-treating at Brandon's work & church and in 2010, I can't even remember what we did but Lucy was only a year and a half so we might not have done anything at all). Lucy got to go trick-or-treating with some of her neighborhood friends but knows her own limitations and after a small radius, told her daddy she was tired and called it quits.

We still have a bag with a substantial amount of candy in it on top of our fridge but it does include all the treats she gets all throughout the year (Pioneer Day treats from July as well) and we aren't always consistent in distributing them to her unless she asks directly. And sometimes Mommy sneaks a treat for herself here and there. It's never too early for Lucy to learn to share with her younger brother.