Happy Halloween!

Our Halloween festivities began on Tuesday night with pumpkin carving!  This was Claire's first carving experience and she loved it.  

Posing with her pumpkin and her hot chocolate.  

Anna had a HUGE pumpkin and loved that we busted out the hot chocolate; she lives for hot chocolate! 

Drawing on the face she wanted cut out.  

Claire drew specifications for her face too.  

Anna's face:  

Mmmm....hot chocolate.

Mmmmm...hot chocolate.

Claire got started cleaning out her pumpkin once the details of the face had been determined.  

She did an excellent job picking out all the seeds.

Anna had to have a little extra assistance with her's, it was full!

Claire loved all the stringy goo!

Anna's jack-o-lantern.  I tried my best to follow the lines.  

Claire wanted to be sure to supervise the carving of her pumpkin.  

Goo!

The final products!

I think I did OK following Claire's directions.  

On Halloween the girls both had parties at school with costumes.  They each came home with a goodie bag from the fun day.  

Claire loved getting her first treats from a school party!

After supper, we got on costumes and headed out for pictures and trick-or-treating.

This year we had a banana and a bear.  

Our little bear did a great job trick-or-treating.  She bravely followed Anna up to each door and happily took treats.  She even said, "Day doo" ("Thank you") at each door.  

Banana was still a bit shy at first, but knew she had to show Claire the ropes and loved it.  

We got home and they were excited to check out their loot!

Anna dumped a full bucket....

So Claire thought she should too!

They got more than enough candy to last them (and my students) a long time.  

Moments after this candy dumping the tummy bug hit our house.  Anna got sick first, followed by mommy the next night.  It was a fun Halloween, but the days following have been a bit rough.  We think we are now in the clear and are looking forward to starting a fresh week.  

Anna has been asking for weeks when the Christmas decorations could go up.  We just turned the calendar to November and marked on her calendar the day after Thanksgiving as decorating day.  She's so pumped.  This girl loves holidays, just like her mama!