Happy Halloween!!!

The carved pumpkins! 

We tried many a group picture - these are the best we came up with!  Mitchell is a pumpkin, Ben is a revolutionary boy, Emily is the Ice Princess, and Annie is a black cat.  I was my traditional witch.  Andy joined us halfway through as a dad.  :) 

We had such fun sorting candy this year!  The most collected candy was kit kats at 27!  So sadly, I had made a pact with myself the day before for no more chocolate; that pact lasted just over a month, but I'm sure saved me a good 10 pounds!  Anyway, Mitchell fell in love with the idea of suckers.  He had several in each hand and carried them around the room.  Then we cleaned up the candy and took his suckers away.  Then we had to do it again for the video camera - such devastation for that little boy!  It was so super cute...we may or may not have given and taken away suckers from him a few more times of the next week to see the tears turn on and off with impressive speed...

Loving on Mom

As most moms know, it is so rare to have pictures with your kiddos as most of the time, you are the person taking the pictures - unless Grandma is around.  :)  However, we had a relaxed Saturday afternoon when Andy came home.  We sat on the floor in the kitchen and just had a little family conversation, which turned into family hugs.  Love this sweet memories!!! 

Emily was sad and didn't want to face the camera until it was just the two of us!

Halloween came so quickly that we didn't have time to prepare everything.  Mitchell and I attended 5 parties in 20 hours!  It was quite the holiday and candy-fest! 

Carving pumpkins has never been my favorite activity.  We held out for Dad until the last possible moment, then we had two hours left until trick-or-treating!  I sucked it up, got out the tools, and dug into those slimy pumpkin seeds!  Thankfully, Ben is completely able to create his personal masterpiece, and the girls are mostly competent, so it was actually pretty fun!  I think it's more the planning-process I don't enjoy...but the actual cutting was great!