Our Happy Halloween

We started off the Halloween celebrations with Trunk or Treat at old church on the Sunday evening before Halloween. We had alot of fun and it was soooo great to see our long time friends over there. We miss that church dearly. It is the church where I accepted Christ at age 9, the church we met back in 1991 and got married in 6 years later. So many treasured relationships at that church!

I let Pops and Gigi borrow (haha) my 1965 Mustang Fastback
to use as there trunk. They got this car for me when I was 16.
Love it! Would drive it all the time if it had seatbelts in the back,
airbags and got better gas mileage.

The ballerina with Pops and Gigi (or a pumpkin and skeleton belly).

Get a load of this motley crew!
My older bro Kevin (on the the ground with the black wig)
brought his GF Shannon and her boys.

Later that week, we went to the Pumpkin Patch here in Saginaw and picked up our pumpkins and did a little hay maze with Riley.

Grandpa and Grandma sent a package from Michigan (love getting those!!)
with these pumpkin decorations. Too cute and so much fun to do!!

At school that week, Riley had dress up day on each day for drug-free stuff. Anyway, he was able to dress-up on Friday as his favorite storybook character. He picked out Curious George, but I didn't want to scurry around all week trying to get together a monkey costume, so I talked him into being Obi-Wan Kanobi. He jumped right on that. So we got out his costume from last year and he wore that to school on Halloween.

Riley so very precious. And then there is Victoria ... in all her splendor.

The only memories I have of Halloween as a child are the ones when my parents dressed up (and the one where I got a nose bleed like 30 seconds before we walked out the door). I can't remember what I was from year to year, but I can remember some of their costumes. I think it is just so much fun to go all out for your kids on some things. So this year we put a few decorations outside, made some Halloween cookies and I did dress up on Halloween. I dug around in some of my high school and college storage bins and found a shirt I wore at the HSU All-School Sing in 1996 when we performed our Hillbilly show. So, I was a hillbilly with pig-tails and freckles. Riley liked it when I picked him up from school and was all dressed up. I forgot to get a picture with me and the kids ... oh well.

It was finally here, time for Trick or Treating. Riley drove from house to house in his John Deere motorized tractor and Carey pulled Victoria in the wagon. We only did about 8 houses or so before Riley called it quits. He was so very sweet walking Victoria up to the door. However, he kept leaving her behind after he got his candy. "Go get your sister, Riley" was repeated every time.

Indiana Jones and the ballerina are ready to go.

Riley helping his sister trick or treat from house to house. I will never
forget the image of him holding her hand and walking up to the houses.
It was just absolutely precious.

The haul.

Fortunately for us, Carey and I were able to snatch most of the chocolate. There are some perks to this parenting stuff.