Halloween 2013 :)

My Jedi and Little Snow White :)

Yay for Halloween! It's always been one of my absolute favorite holidays, and now it looks like Evie is following in her mother's footsteps ;)

This Halloween season really started for us at the end of September... That's when I made the mistake of leaving Evie with Karl and Christer while I went to the General Relief Society meeting broadcast. They took her to the mall to play on the playground, and while there, Evie discovered the TaylorMaid Halloween shop. Why they put it RIGHT next to the playground, I'll never know. I mean, there were super creepy zombie/possessed/evil/clown/insane automated mannequins in the windows. I was even a little off-put by them. 

Evie, on the other hand, was obsessed with that store...

She really liked that they had cardboard cut outs of Darth Vader and Rapunzel and there was stuff from a bunch of Disney movies she's into, so I think that was the major draw for her, but she was also very interested in the creepy stuff. 

Over the course of the next few weeks we made at least a couple trips a week to the "Halloween store" (which included that store and two different "Halloween City"s). She was very serious and a little unnerved, I think, but she kept wanting to go back and look at everything; I'm still slightly worried that we are terrible parents and have ruined her for life.

Evie now loves everything Halloween and especially creepy things: ghosts, zombies, spiders, mummies, etc. I wish we had gotten some pictures of her at her favorite stores! She was so sad when Halloween ended and all the special stores closed.

By the time we got to the day itself, she was pretty excited! She'd been talking for weeks about "tricken-treating", it was super cute.

The nearly finished product

I really wanted Evie to be Snow White this year; I thought she would make a perfect little Snow White and I figured this would be the last time she wouldn't have a huge opinion on her costume! I got the idea to make Evie's costume from scratch, and I just have to say, I am so proud of myself for going through with it! Usually I have all these ambitious ideas and they never go anywhere... There were so many places along the way where I could have given up, but I didn't! And I think the results were pretty cute ;)

Karl also had a pretty ambitious idea once he saw that I could kind of sew... He wanted to be a Jedi, and he wanted me to make the costume. Considering we've had costume ideas every year, and yet never completed one since we've been married AND I'm not very confident in my sewing skills, I was a little skeptical that it would happen. I have to say, I'm pretty stinking proud that I managed to finish TWO costumes. I'm not a very good seamstress, so it took a lot of late nights and incredible frustration, but they got done (barely) in time! Unfortunately, with the complicated nature of Karl's and Evie's costumes and the lack of free time to work on them, my costume never got finished. So, I was boring this year, hopefully next year we'll get everyone dressed up!!

 

Princess Evie: Jedi Knight

 A couple of days before Halloween, we got to go trick-or-treating at Riverwoods! I honestly didn't know that there were so many places that did trick-or-treating events, but you learn a lot once you become a mom of toddler who needs lots of things to do, lol! We were a little nervous about how many people would be there, but decided Evie would like it anyway, so we gave it a try.

 

She seemed a bit overwhelmed most of the time, but she really liked it! She loved seeing all the other people in costumes (especially the costumes she recognized from movies, haha). My one complaint with the whole experience was that they had very cheap candy... Not that I'm a snob or anything, but it was all the super hard kind that is terrible for little kids, unfortunately. Also, a bunch of shops ran out of candy by the time we got there, which was only about a half hour after they started, and the thing had another hour and a half to go!

 

 

 Halloween itself, we started our trick-or-treating at the mall! Once again, she seemed pretty overwhelmed by all the people and things to see (and I think she was a little tired), but she had such a great time getting candy in her pumpkin! She got a lot of compliments on what a perfect Snow White she made :)

 

Finally, we got to go trick-or-treating around my parent's neighborhood with my little sisters, Mary and Amaia (and grandmama, Susi, and Andy were there too)! This was by FAR the best thing that happened EVER. I wish we had gotten some pictures, but it was already very dark by the time we got out :(

All the other things we had done were great, but this was the real experience Evie had been waiting for. She had a great time marching up to all the doors and saying "tricken-treat!" and getting candy in her pumpkin! She had a hard time keeping up with Mary and Maia, so there was one point where she tripped and fell in street trying to go "fast like a superhero!" and she got an owie, but she recovered pretty quickly (though she will continue to comment on the incident for months to come).

After going just halfway around the block I noticed that she was starting to slow down more and more. It took me a bit to figure it out, but I realized that her pumpkin was getting so full of candy that it was too heavy for her! I tried to hold it for her and even asked if I could just help her, but she adamantly refused to let anyone touch her candy bucket! She dragged that thing along for at least 20 more minutes of trick-or-treating (meanwhile, it's getting heavier and heavier!). I can't believe what a determined little girl she is!

All in all, it was a pretty good Halloween :) We discovered Evie's slightly morbid side and got a ton of candy!!