Halloween

Halloween and Christmas are probably both tied in the running as to which is my favorite holiday. I have been so excited to be able to dress Daphne up for her first Halloween that I started working on her costume months before, which was a really good thing because I got so busy I didn't even finish it until the day of. We had such fun both preparing for Halloween as well as celebrating it!

A few weekends before we got together with my brother, Rueben, and his wife, Kamille to decorate haunted gingerbread houses. We did the same thing with them last year when they were dating and I am pretty sure we will keep this as a yearly tradition. Last year Rueben and Kamille were too busy flirting and painting each other's faces with frosting that Dan and I actually stood a chance at having our house look somewhat decent in comparison with theirs. This year...well not so much. They were super quiet all evening as they worked on their masterpiece will Dan and I enjoyed trying to be as funny as possible with ours to make up for our lack of talent:) We decided to make it a contest in hopes that we would win, well, let's just say that we now owe them dinner.

Left: The masterpiece. Right: The tease....everything from the tombstones, the writing on the house, to the personal Rueben and Kamille skeletons burning to ashes...yup.

We also had our friends, Mike and Julia, over one night to decorate sugar cookies and carve pumpkins (which we never got to... but it's the thought that counts, right?), a tradition that we have had for a few years now. Once again, it's a good thing we just do such things for fun....

Mike's masterpiece

Dan's upside down bat? (or at least that is what he is claiming it is). Someone called it a rainbow... can't believe they didn't think it looked like a bat?!? ;)

Now to the actual day of Halloween! Presenting little miss peacock in honor of Aunt Nat's peacock fetish:

Daphne got to go trick or treating to see three of her favorite households. Everyone was super excited to get a picture with Daphne. First stop, to see Aunt Nat, Uncle Mike, and their peacock neighbors.

Second stop, Grandma & Grandpa Jasmer and Uncle Gabe. She got the best reaction of the night from her Grandma Jasmer who couldn't help but shut the door in our face dying with laughter over the cutie and forgot all about letting the little peacock in:) While there we got to see her dino cousin, Boston, and she even got to go trick or treating to a few of the neighbors.

Third stop, Grandma and Grandpa Black's house where we got spoiled with a yummy dinner which included dinner in a pumpkin, roasted pumpkin seeds, apple cider, caramel apples, and pumpkin cookies. It was yummy! Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum (Kamille & Rueben) even stopped by while we were there too!

We took about 1000 pictures of the dino and peacock together. Smiling never happened, but we sure did get lots of pictures of them staring at us (wondering why we make all sorts of crazy sounds and huddle around them with a camera all the time) or staring at each other (they were definitely curious as to why the other was dressed so funny).

 Presenting Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum:

 

 

Or in this case, they decided to make Dan both Twiddle Dee and Dum by sandwiching him (if you look closely their shirts point at the other calling each other Twiddle Dee or Dum)

And the dinner in a pumpkin: I should have taken a picture before when it was pretty versus after we dug in, but this proves that it was super yummy because we scarfed it all down!

Can't wait for next Halloween:)