Halloween and a small 52 Smiles Project

This year our family went with the Sports Theme.  Ahren was a football player, the girls were cheerleaders and Tim and I were coaches.  We had 2 back to back days of a lot of fun!

First day was our annual Wagon Train easter-style halloween hunt.  This consists of throwing candy in the yard and letting the kids hunt for it with their flashlights.  Some of the kids are getting a little big and fast for the hunt, so this year we tried to slow them down.  Erin VB put dum dums in a balloon and the big kids (age 4+) had to pop all of the balloons before they could grab any candy on the ground.  Meanwhile the little kids got a head start on the easy candy.  Great idea, Erin!

I made the girl's skirts with help from an online pattern and freehanded their shirts.

We did pumpkin bowling and almost had pumpkin pie by the time the game was over :)

The bowling pins were water bottles with glow sticks.

 Each kid also had a party/parade at their school.  First was Annie's:

Then Lydia's:

Then Ahren's:

Wrap your buddy as a mummy!

Halloween night we were invited to dinner with good friends, the Allen's.  They had a "Norman Rockwell" setting in their front lawn/driveway with gobs of great food and as many kids as you could count.  It was a very inviting atmosphere and I wanted to sit there all night.  But, alas, the kids wanted to go trick or treating!

So, we went back to our neighborhood to do treating.  Last year after visiting a neighbor who doesn't celebrate halloween and being slightly embarrassed that I didn't know that about her and knocking on her door anyway, I decided we needed to be giving something to our neighbors and not just taking from them.  So, this year after we made applesauce, I bottled up some of the goodness to share with the six neighbors we know the best.

Those were the six houses we went to and that was it!  It was a perfect amount and the kids have enough  more than enough candy to last to Thanksgiving (coming in another post).