"Trunk Or Treat"

Halloween was very exciting for me this year. I had grand ideas for costumes, 4 pumpkins to carve, and my mom around beforehand to help me prepare. The costumes ended up working out (for the kiddos at least) and the pumpkins, well...

Stella was excited to help carve pumpkins so I decided to carve hers first. I was going to try to be super cool and carve our faces from "cartoon" drawings of pictures of each of us on our own pumpkin, but then got realistic and decided to carve our first initial onto each pumpkin. Its a good thing I started with Stella's, because what started out as standing for her turned into standing for "S"mith since we only made it through one pumpkin before running out of time.

Stella was all about helping, until she reached her hand in and felt what was inside. Then she just wanted to watch and kept saying, "I can't pull seeds out". This picture was taken right after she reached inside - you can see it on her face that she felt tricked. She was obviously not expecting all the gooey stuff.

(This is Stella's "shy" face. She makes it a lot these days.)

Because my mom was in town and could help wrangle children while I tried my hand at the sewing machine, I was able to successfully and super quickly make the kids costumes. I decided a while ago that I wanted Stella to be a flapper this year. I thought it was the perfect thing for her because of her hair right now- so decided I'd better do it while I could. We also had a cowboy hat for Sterling that I thought wouldn't fit him for a while. I tried it on a few months ago to see if it might be able to work, and it was almost too small. So I decided then that he was a cowboy this year - and crossed my fingers that his head would't grow too rapidly. My mom had the awesome idea of having me go as a cowgirl, and Andy as a 20's gangster - so that we could partner with our kids, and we planned on that for a while, but then Andy decided he didn't want to wear one of his suits to the trunk or treat complete with neon cotton candy and chili cook off contest, so we both ended up being cowboy's. Stella was odd man out - but she looked adorable, so it didn't matter.

Sterling had the whole ticked off cowboy look down for all the pictures. He was actually a really good sport - wore his hat almost all night long and everything.

Stella came with me to buy the candy to pass out, and I told her it was for the trunk or treat. From that moment on she started saying she wanted to trunk or treat "right now" and becasme super excited for the whole thing to go down. She said trunk or treat at every car we went to, and told everyone thank you using sign language (everyone thought she was blowing them kisses) which got her even more candy.

We couldn't find Stella's pumpkin (candy holder) so she used her little Louis Vuitton ... She tried to zip it up between each car... I guess she wanted to make absolutely positive not one piece of precious candy would fall out.

Stella thought she was so cool holding the pumpkin. I think it may have weighed as much as she did.

(Look closely, you can see Sterlings teeth)

This next picture is of my friend Shalene and her costume partner in crime Jill. Stella was freaked out by Shalene. (the clown fish) She hid under the table the entire time she was around talking with all of us. I was impressed that this was the only costume she was afraid of. (funny thing is, Stella knows Shalene well, she is in the Young Womens presidency with me, so we spend a fair amount of time together - but in Stella's defense, I didn't ever recognize her at first!)

Stella's precious loot. Not bad!