Happy Halloween!

The day before Halloween, we all sat down to decorate pumpkins (or "pumkim" as Eliana calls them).  The girls used pens to draw on theirs.

Eliana got to use a Sharpie, which she loooves using because she knows usually only grown ups get to use Sharpie pens.  (For good reason: the other day she accidentally drew on our dining table.  Anyone have ideas on how to get Sharpie marks off of wood?)

Daddy's pumpkin was a little bigger and got a face carved into it.  Karina helped out.

On Halloween Night, Eliana was super excited.  She ate dinner really quickly and changed into her princess costume right away (with a dress, pearl necklace, and sparkly pink shoes).  Then kept asking every 30 seconds if it was time to start trick-or-treating yet.

After dinner, we put Karina into her costume.  This bumble bee costume kept her really warm.

Before going out, we wanted to have the girls take a posed picture with the jack-o-lantern.  No such luck; they would not hold still.  The only one that was cooperating that night and smiled for the camera was the pumpkin.

"I loooove the Halloween!" exclaimed Eliana as we were tromping through the neighborhood collecting more and more candy. There seems to be a correlation between her love of certain holidays and the amount of sugar that the holiday produces. Although we actually visited only about twenty or so houses, it still took a while to do that. This was partly because midway through trick or treating, Eliana started doing the potty dance and we had to run back home. (Yes, rookie parent mistake: not forcing your kid to go potty before heading out.) Also, if a house featured scary decorations, Eliana would freeze about 15 feet from the door and we would have to retreat and head to another house. But overall Eliana and Karina enjoyed themselves.

After getting back home, Eliana had fun checking out her loot while Karina took swigs of water.  (She really enjoys drinking water out of any container that is NOT her sippy cup.)  Eliana got to choose and eat three pieces of candy.  Eliana raided a Reese's peanut butter cup out of Karina's stash and let her have a couple bites of that.

And this picture shows the goodies that we were passing out at our house.  Yes, that's right, bottled water.  Before you start scoffing...  In the beginning of the night, the kids were interested only in the candy.  But as the night wore on, more and more kids took the water instead.  And by the end of the night (presumably after some kids had been eating handfuls of candy and were dying of thirst), lots of kids were downright excited about seeing water.  "Look, Mom!  They have water!"  And one parent gave us a thumbs up to us and yelled, "Way to go!"