Happy Halloween!!!

The pre-Halloween festivities this year began with a trip to the local pumpkin patch, Bizi Farms.  The kids have been going there since Eliana was a baby and this year was no different.

The kids rode on the hay ride to get to the field.  Cousin Lena came down from Seattle to join in.

Pumpkins were carefully selected from amongst the hundreds available.

The kids also spent time with the activities.  They really enjoyed the rubber ducky race where they float down the tracks if you pump the water pump fast enough.

They also enjoyed jumping into the gigantic corn bin, which made them filthy by covering them with a weird white corn-based powder.

The weekend before Halloween, it was time to carve the pumpkins.  This year, all the kids helped with taking the ultra slimy "guts" out of the pumpkins, even Xiao Yu!

Karina carved her pumpkin 100% by herself, also a first.  She carved three faces into the pumpkin.  None of which were super scary individually but it was rather creepy having three faces stare out at you from one pumpkin.

Eliana also carved the pumpkin 100% by herself.  The theme for this year for her pumpkin was fruit.

And here they are...Gabe wanted a Star Wars X-wing fighter on his pumpkin and Xiao Yu chose a silly face.

And then Halloween finally arrived and it was time to head off and collect candy.  Gabe dressed up as a soccer player (which was not a big stretch for him), Eliana was a drop of water (she drew the drop on the cardboard using pastels by herself), Xiao Yu was a flower, and Karina was a flower seedling (a little bit harder to fathom than Xiao Yu's costume).

And they were off.  THANKFULLY it wasn't raining.  Yay!  Elvin was very happy about that.

After going around the block, it was time to come back home.  It's amazing that they are able to collect about a gallon of candy in only an hour.  And then the kids inspected their loot.

And they sorted, divided, and categorized their candy.  The two big categories were: candy-I-want/like and candy-I-don't-like.  Things in the second category were bartered and traded away for more favorable candy.  However, some things, like 3 Muskateers and Baby Ruth, were rejected by all.

Overall, it was a good Halloween.  And what do you do with your empty Halloween pails, after Halloween is over?  Well, if you're Gabriel then you stack then up into a Halloween "snowman"!  That boy is pretty creative!