Southern Lovin': Boo, Y'all!

Happy Halloween! Hope yours was as fun as ours was! We had a great time. The kids were so excited to dress up and get CANDY!!! I had pirate costumes ready to wear and since Jared loves to play with swords I just knew he'd love it. But no, he wanted to be an elephant! An elephant?! Yes, an elephant. Okaaaay. After several days of casually asking him every so often what he wanted to be for Halloween and getting the same response, "I want to be an Elephant!" I thought ok, I'll do it. I went online and found instructions for making an elephant costume, made my list of needed supplies, called WalMart to make sure they had plain grey sweat suits (to be cut up and transformed) and I was ready to do this. I picked Jared up from school and in the WalMart parking lot confirmed his request one last time. Yes, he still wanted to be an elephant. Abigail pipes up and says, "Me too! I want to me an elephant like Jared!" Jared balks. I said, "Ok, you can both be elephants but as soon as we go in there and buy the stuff for it, there's no changing your minds." "No, I don't want Abigail to be the same as me! I don't want to be an elephant!" (roll eyes) "Ok, then what do you want to be?" "A power ranger!" ... and off to Party City we go. Jared wanted to be every picture he saw but was fairly consistant on choosing the Power Ranger once I narrowed down his choices. Abigail wanted to be everything she saw and had no consistency whatsoever so we finally left with one blue Power Ranger suit and a decision that we could just dive into the dress up box and put Abigail in whatever suited her fancy 5 minutes before we walked out the door for trick or treating. I had this cute princess / fairy dress that I thought she'd love but alas that stayed on only 5 minutes before she said she wanted to take it off and be Tigger. So, our final selections were: 1 blue Power Ranger, 1 Tigger and 1 Pumpkin Pooh. The funny thing is that when Jared was an infant he was Pumpkin Pooh for Halloween. When Abigail was a baby, she was Pumpkin Pooh and Jared was Tigger. This year, Rachel was Pumpkin Pooh and Abigail was Tigger. Too bad I didn't have a Rabbit, Piglet or Eyore costume for Jared! Anyway, here's how my crew looked:

((( By the way, if anyone can tell me why I can no longer click on my photos to see a larger version please send me a comment and let me know. In my earlier posts you could do that but in my last post and this one, you can't??? Thanks!!)))

Here's our crew - ready to go! Tigger, Pumpkin Pooh and the Blue Power Ranger

We went with our neighbors - the kids loved it! Well, all except Rachel who wasn't too thrilled at this point!

Rachel traveled the night in style - Giddy Up, Daddy!

Note Jared looking in the window - "Hey, I KNOW you're in there!"

Jared and Abigail in hot pursuit of the next handful of sweets, leaving Mommy and Daddy in the dust!

John, trying to get the kids to hold up.

Rachel - "Hey, who turned out the lights?! Oh, there you are...."

Abigail trying to manage her load on the way home! The kids racked up and those bags were rather heavy by the end of it all!

We stopped by Miss Ashley's house for one final handful of goodies and some fun. Since we live in a ranch on a slab, the kids are in HEAVEN any time we visit friends that have *gasp!* STAIRS!!!! Over and Over and Over, they leapt over that five or six steps at top and then relished every bump and thump as they did belly slides down to the bottom. Jared is doing some sort of Power Ranger pose here.