Happy Halloween!

We had a fun Halloween this year. My mom was in Chicago for some teachers conference and my dad was staying with Marie's family, so we went up North to celebrate with Brian's family. We only got to go for a couple of days, but it was worth it! Brian got to golf in the Thanksgiving Point tournament with his dad and had the best round of golf in his life. While he was doing that, the boys and I went with Grandma to Ikea ("Oh, Itea. I love Itea!!" as Ollie puts it). That's where we found a wooden train set that Ollie spent the whole weekend playing with. After golf and Ikea, we carved pumpkins. Ollie wasn't too thrilled about putting his hand in the goo, but Dexy tried it. Then I helped Ollie do the carving. He did a great job and our happy pumpkin turned out brillant! After carving, it was costume time. Ollie has been talking about Halloween for 6 weeks, but when it came time to put on his costume he would have none of it! Flatly refusing, we let him go in his orange tee and camo pants. At least it was along the right lines and color schemes. Dexy, however, was very agreeable and very adorable in his pumpkin costume! He even held up his foot to showcase the matching booties when Brian went to take a picture. Then we had much visiting to do. We saw Brian's uncle Mark and family. That's where the boys got frosted ghost sugar cookies and Ollie started to decide that this whole Trick or Treating thing was actually a good thing after all. Then we saw Brian's Grandma Christensen and then headed off to Ben and Amanda's place. There's where we did our actual Trick or Treating (not a lot though, because it was unfortunately rainy, dark, and cold), had dinner, and watched Monster House. Funny story: at the last door that we knocked on, right across from Ben and Amanda's, Ollie had totally gotten into the groove and joy of Halloween. He knocked and called out, "Trick or Treat!" but no one answered. He knocked and called out a couple more times, but the door remained closed. Then he looked up at us (Ben, Amanda, Dexy and I), knocked one last desperate time and said, "I want tandy!" He definitely had it figured out by the end! We had a great Halloween "party." Then we went back to the Bowles' house to get the boys to bed, seeing as it was 10 PM by that point, but the boys were all hyped up and wanted to keep playing, plus they were covered in food, soda, and candy and therefore needed a bath. After they were cleaned and in jammies (Ollie refused to even wear the Halloween jammies, so Dexy got to), Ollie, of course, went right back to playing with his train and Dexy, of course, to throwing the ball for Haji. I had to drag them off to bed at quarter to 11! But they fell asleep quickly and were out!! Unfortunately, they woke up the next morning at 7:45!! Not only did they get little sleep, but Church wasn't even until 1 o'clock so we could have slept in. Oh, well. Too much fun going on, I guess. They wouldn't want to miss it. Happy Halloween!