My FAVORITE holiday

Nope, halloween is my least favorite holiday. To me it involves too much preparation, too much candy, and not enough reason to even exist. We have parties and parades and eating junk and I always wonder, what are we celebrating again? This year I learned the cultural reasons it is celebrated, and that helps me understand it better, but gave me no more appreciation for it. If you would like to hear the history of its origin, you can view it HERE.

Fun for the kids though. I was really hands off on the costuming this year, as my suggestions are usually ignored (except last year when I made that Aang costume for Weston, that was so awesome!) and when I try to assist in THEIR ideas I usually bung them up. Me and Savanna in particular. This year all three thought of their own costumes and all three dressed themselves up and all three were satisfied and happy. Savanna asked me several times if she looked good and I smiled and nodded, but can a Zombie really look "good?" She was totally into creating it, tattering clothes, makeup, she wanted to look SCARY! (I prefer cute costumes like Minnie Mouse, fairies, Mary Poppins, etc.) Fiora was Frankensteins Bride, then a witch. Weston was Harry Potter. He actually made a very convincing Harry.






One thing I like is carving pumpinks and harvesting the seeds. We all around here love roasted pumpkin seeds! The kids are old enough to clean their own pumpkins now, and draw their faces for carving, Savanna even carved hers without any help from me. Its great!




Justin and Kali Barrett hosted a halloween party for just the Barretts. They are so great at decorating and making yummy treats! (I loved the skull with the ham slices all over it.) Three times I was offered a pudding cup with oreos (one of my favorite treats) and I'll have you know that twice I was strong and declined, but when sweet Mekhi brought one too me and firmly said "Here!" that was it, I indulged. Justin's baby Dextin was the cutest little monkey, he was passed around and gushed over by all of us the whole party.




The Lindon 9th ward had a ward soup dinner and trunk or treat on Saturday. OK, I had no idea how big that was around here, I brought some granola bars and about 60 little candy bars, thinking I had PLENTY, but somehow hundreds of kids were coming out of nowhere, and we ran out of treats first and had to shut our trunk. So on Monday I had to go buy more candy for actual Halloween, and bought way too much this time, because apparantly trunk-or-treat is ALL they do here, we had maybe 7 or 8 trickortreaters all night. I was sooo frustrated for buying so much candy I made Jared take the kids to our old neighborhood and get more candy just so I could justify the amount I'd spent! Now there is entirely TOO MUCH sugar in our rooms, fridge, and freezer, and I was tempted to eat a candy bar yet again and suffered with a head ache and drowsiness and irritability for an hour after. I keep thinking that consequence won't happen one of these times. (Maybe the abundance of temptation to eat badly is the real reason I hate halloween, but seriously, what are we celebrating again?)