Halloween 2011

It was time again for Amanda & Brannon's annual Halloween Bash! I decided to head down a few days early to help Amanda with prep and I ended up carpooling with an old friend who has recently moved into our ward. So we packed up the highlander on Wednesday, had 3 car seats in the back, and experienced snow, hail and excessive rain on our trip down, but it actually went well. I dropped Britney and her girls off at her parents' and then headed to the Halloween house. 

Most of Amanda's decorations were already up, so I just helped with a little bit of the cooking. Here is the treat line-up Amanda had all planned out for the party: chocolate covered Oreos, red velvet cupcakes, cake pops, rice crispy treats, worms and dirt, chocolate covered strawberries, macaroons (the only item purchased), punch, and a candy bar (all sorts of candies in glass containers for people to make their own little trick-or-treat take home box). Mind you all of these treats were Halloween themed, for example the strawberries were white and had faces that looked like ghosts and the rice crispy treats were orange, shaped like pumpkins and had a tootsie roll for a stem. And of course Brannon had the cotton candy machine going outside. We also ended up making some stew in a pumpkin for dinner that night. I think that stew saved me from a complete sugar overload.

Our family ended up being some of the characters from the Curious George cartoon on PBS. Truman was George, Rick, The Man in the Yellow Hat, and I was Dr. Wiseman (their lady professor friend). The costumes were easy and turned out pretty well. Truman didn't really keep his mask on, but that was expected.  

Here are some more costumes:

Mary Poppins and Burt, the chimney sweep

I think Max won the award for cutest costume of the night as Flynn Rider from Tangled. He looks like such a little man!

We took Truman trick-or-treating and he did surprisingly well. He would walk up with his bag and say, "tee teet", then he would get his candy and try to go into their house. We would then discourage him from going into strangers' homes (after encouraging him to ask for and then take candy from them...hmmm). Then, he would sign thank you and say, "bye-bye". He wasn't super into it though, so we only went to about 5 houses and then headed back to the party.

It was a really fun weekend and a big thanks to Amanda and Brando for letting us stay with them/hosting a fantastic party. Truman had so much fun at "Manna's" house! He would look for Uncle Brando, aka "Mano" every morning and he loved running around their house, playing at their near by park and of course getting every one to play ring-around-the-rosie. Now to start thinking of costumes for next year...