Happy Halloween!

Click Here For the Entire Halloween Week Slideshow at Shutterfly: http://cmd.shutterfly.com/commands/pictures/slideshow?site=ainsleyspics&page=ainsleyspics&album=283

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween! It was a hectic week with Steve having a major work deadline (and working until 2am many nights) the week before the holiday. But somehow we managed to pull it all off. We made it to the school Barns & Noble bookfair. Surprised Daddy with a new Hermoine hair-do. Had costume day at ballet class and preschool. We squeezed in some fun carving pumpkins at a friend's party. On Halloween we made chicken alphabet soup in a pumpkin and cemetery "dirt" cake (since I'd promised the kids we would but didn't have time to do it earlier in the week as planned). We all Trick-or-Treated around the neighborhood for about an hour. WE DID IT! Phew! Thank God my sister Sheryl was here Halloween night to help us pull it off and hand out candy while we were gone. It looks much more fun and relaxed in pictures than it was in real life.

This year the whole family dressed in Harry Potter costumes: Evie was Hermoine, Adrian HP himself, Steve was Professor Dumbledore (he forgot to wear his glasses, oops), I was Professor McGonagall and Ainsley was Harry Potter's owl Hedwig. She cried because she hated the hood but stopped after about 5 minutes. At least she was toasty warm outside in the cold. Steve and I would normally NOT dress up for Halloween. But, Evie has been obsessed with Harry Potter all summer (complete with life size paper HP decorations all over the house e.g. see Jenny on the bathroom floor picture) and has been talking about dressing as Hermione since then. So somehow she badgered us and pleaded enough to convince us to do it. In the end I'm glad she did even though it was a lot of trouble just for trick-or-treating (and of course the picture my reward).

This Halloween Ainsley was uncertain about the whole costume thing. We started trying them on earlier in the week. It took several days seeing me dressed up for her to start to get that it was still me under the granny wig and witch hat. She would look at me with the funniest expression like, "What is going on? Who is that? What did you do with my mommy? Should I laugh, cry or be scared?" I SO wish she could talk so I knew what she was thinking. She's a pretty go-with-the-flow kind of gal so luckily she got over the owl costume pretty easily and then seemed to enjoy the walk around the neighborhood in the dark trick-or-treating but the real fun for her began when we got home, took off the costume and she got to play with the kids' candy all laid out on the carpet. I guess that's the best part for all of us, really. Evie and Adrian ate enough chocolate to make them sick but Ainsley's treat of the night was her sweet little feet.