Happy Halloween!

Our adorable little yellow crayon!

She got to go trick-or-treating for the first time this year! She said it was lots of fun!  Of course, why wouldn't it be fun to walk up, smile shyly at people, whisper "trick-or-treat, hear repeatedy that you are the cutest crayon ever, get candy...in some cases extra pieces because "you are so adorable"...then whisper "thank you" and move to the next store and repeat!? We took Rachel to trick-or-treat at the mall

which she now calls the "trick-or-treat mall"...it was fun!

She ate one piece of candy at Chili's that night while we were having dinner. To be honest, I think she has forgotten about it as she has not mentioned it again. We went up one side and down the other...just the main corrider of the mall. She got a nice little variety mainly Smarties, Dots, Tootsie Rolls, lollipops and a few other items. I gave her all the stickers from  her pumpkin basket and she was quite happy with them. I think it was a good first run. I'm actually glad she did not get a lot of chocolate as it will keep me out of her Halloween goodies. I did not have to buy any Halloween candy this year as we do not get trick-or-treaters out where we live. I do have some candy corn on hand. Rachel loves that stuff, and it is cute to see how excited and surprised she is when I stick a little candy corrn treat in with her snack as a special treat;)..."Oh, thank you, Mommy! You surprised me!". She did try a Kit Kat for the first time last week. Her swim class teacher gave them little bags of candy on Thursday. I told her kitties like Kit Kats and gave her one little wafer to try. She liked it very much and proceeded to lick her "paws" like a kitty. That prompted me to say, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty..." which always gets the same response from her...she brings one of her legs up and pretends to scratch herself behind her ear with her foot. Makes me laugh out loud every single time!

I personally enjoyed the weeks leading up to Halloween. The night itself has never been my thing...dressing up, asking for candy etc...do not care for it so much. I do not enjoy being startled or scared, so haunted things, spiders, bats, scary masks etc...not fun to me. I am not big into horror films. I still consider the original Halloween movie, the first scary movie I ever saw back when I was a teen, the scariest movie I have ever seen. I honestly still have nightmares in which that white masked Michael shows up. I think the fact that it was not gory made it even more scary. And then there's the music...way to go John Carpenter...still gives me chills thinking about it!

The weeks leading up to halloween were lots of fun, like I said. I tried, for several hours this evening, to upload a bunch more pictures. For some reason, blogger gives me trouble with this process and I gave up. Will try again tomorrow, but one weekend we enjoyed a horse drawn hayride out to the Pumpkin Patch at a local farm. Rachel rode the Cow Train all by herself, and went through the hay maze a few times. We picked oout some pumpkins for carving, drank apple cider, shared an apple cider donut and a pumpkin spice donut, fed goats and simply had a great time. Last Friday, we took Rachel to her first Fall Carnival. Very cute. It was at a local middle school. I thought I might feel a bit nostalgic in the school setting, but nope:). That weekend we also went apple picking. We picked 13 lbs. of apples, went on another hayride, had fresh apple cobbler and ice cream, and picked out more pumpkins. The next day, I made apple crisp, we carved the pumpkins, and we made caramel apples. The house smelled delicious! I still have enough apples for making applesauce and an apple pie. That's what I call Fall Fun!