this year I really can blame my belly on the candy bowl

Halloween festivities have abounded around here over the past week.




We had a successful Halloween party this weekend, with loads of cute babies dressed as loads of cute things.

These rats are not representative of the cute babies.










I have leftovers coming out of my ears; I could literally throw another entire party and have enough to feed people.







Poisonous centipede, anyone?








My mom is visiting, and she and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning preparing and decorating and clearing out space for the 40+ people that rsvped to the party. I was ready to have a nervous breakdown because our tiny house can definitely NOT support 40+ people, but thankfully, they came in shifts. Plus, a quarter of the participants were under a year old, so they took up less space.

We went apple picking, pumpkin picking, traveled through corn mazes, made pumpkin pies and apple muffins, purchased costumes, set up mums and went on foliage trips.

It has been a wonderful month, and I'm a little sad to see it end. Tomorrow we have another party to attend and we're trick or treating at Josh's work in the afternoon before we head home to hand out candy.

Today, however, we completed an important rite of passage for Gabe. We carved his first pumpkin.












He helped. Especially if you count licking the pumpkin and poking things into it helping.




I think we're well on our way to securing the Halloween obsession in the future generation.











More than anything, though, I've realized that Halloween is a million times more fun when you can share it with your friends and family.

I've also realized that time really does fly when you're having fun.

What a difference a year makes, huh?














Happy Halloween from our little stinker to yours!