Two solid weeks of Halloween-ing!

We started out our Halloween-ing a couple of weeks ago with a trip to Vertuccio Farms, my favorite place ever! We really look forward to it every year! It's the perfect kind of fall fun!
Last year Winston was too young to get much out of it, but this year he enjoyed just about everything! He loved the train ride with Mommy and the tractor bikes with Daddy.
He also liked milking the cow!
He didn't like jumping on the giant bouncy pillow very much, but the rest of the kids couldn't get enough of it! All of us Moms and Dads even took our turn on it. It was fun!
Then we got lost for what seemed like a million years (but was probably actually only an hour) in the giant corn maze.
Noelle liked posing on the pumpkins.
Winston did not. I think I might have plopped him down on a pumpkin stem.
To continue our fall fun, we had our cousins over to make some Halloween crafts. We played Halloween Bingo, ate ghost macaroni and pumpkin cookies and watched a Halloween movie.
Winston mostly just tried to eat string cheese through his Transformers mask.
Then they dressed up and played freeze dance together, while Jade sang and Aften recorded it. It was cute to watch them!
Last week we got to go be a part of a little Halloween parade at a nursing home with our friends.
Noelle said her feet hurt and she needed to sit down and rest them because she couldn't go any farther about 5 seconds after we got there (she's not much of a marcher) but other than that I think the cute little kids really liked wishing all of the cute little grandmas and grandpas a Happy Halloween!
We got to go to a friend's super fun Halloween party the next day! It was such a great time, and the "Baby Batmans" had fun trying to figure each other out.
The day after that we went to the Fry's grocery store Halloween Party! We got to trick or treat around the store and color pictures and decorate cookies.
There was even a costume contest, which our friends, the adorable little twin tigers, won first place in!
A couple days later Aunt Adrienne and Uncle Colton came to visit from Maryland, and they dressed up with us for our ward's Trunk-or-Treat.
Winston and Robert were Batman and Robin. Adrienne and Colton were Superman and Flash. Stanton was Captain America, and Noelle and I were Wonderwoman.
I had to suck in most of the night because I got my Wonderwoman costume from the children's section at Target. It said for ages 8-10. It was supposed to be a dress, but on me it was just a really, really tight shirt. The only other Wonderwoman costume I could find was at Fredricks of Hollywood, and I don't think I need to explain why I didn't get that one.
I think we did made a pretty cool superhero family though!

I just can't even get enough of this picture! I think they are so cute flying around the yard together!
After we trick or treated to all of the cars outside, we went inside for games, prizes, face painting and a cake walk. It was such a blast!
Stanton really liked eating donuts off a string!
After Trunk-or-Treat, we raced over to the Hot Air Ballon Festival in Scottsdale. Even though it was late, we really wanted to go, and had lots of free tickets, so we didn't wanna miss it!
We were so glad we went! It was really awesome! We got to trick-or-treat to the hot air balloons, and then we all layed on our backs and watched the sky divers land right nearby us!
Stanton was having the time of his life, jumping up and down laughing that someone had just flown out of a plane, like a superhero! He could not have been more impressed!
He even got to give him a high five!
We also met some people who let us sit in their basket while they lit the fire for us! It was really bright and hot and fun!
So that was our Halloween weekend...
Then on Halloween day, I searched and searched for fun ghostly thinkgs to do, but couldn't find any. We had already baked 8 dozen Halloween cookies (for our neighbors, which I forgot to hand out for 3 days and was stuck with many piles and piles of semi-stale pumpkin and sugar cookies) so more baking was out of the question, even though it seemed Halloween-ish.
So we decided to go to Barnes and Noble to read all of the Halloween books. We read some really good ones, like "The Ugly (censored to goofy-looking) Pumpkin," who "oh my gosh, turns out to be a squash!" We all really liked that one a lot!
Then we went to Rubios for lunch, and after I ordered, I realized that Winston had been playing in my wallet at home and took out my debit card, so I told the nice lady, also named Kimmie, that I needed to cancel my order and she said,
"No, no, no. You guys are cute and your meal is free. Happy Halloween."
She gave us $15 dollars worth of food for free! People are SO nice! I was so happy that I thanked her over and over, everytime she walked by, everytime I refiled my drink, everytime she cleared a table near me, everytime she made eye contact with me. That made it a little awkward for both of us, but I couldn't help it! I just can't get over all of the nice things that people do!
Halloween night, we ate grilled ghost sandwiches, skeleton bones, mummy bodies and witch's brew for dinner. I read a poem to put a spell on the witch's brew, which Noelle took seriously and said it made her cough a lot. She made herself cough all throughout the night.
Robert carved a Jack Skelington pumpkin, which turned out fantastic, and the kids colored on mini pumpkins and decorated them with (Easter???) stickers.
Then we got our costumes on, one last time for trick-or-treating around the neighborhood!
We were out for a couple hours or more, and we ended up with a lot of candy, 92 pieces per child to be exact! It's a tradition to dump it out and count and seperate it.
Among the 276 total pieces of candy we got, someone was handing out brocolli, as a joke, but even when they offered Stanton candy instead, he said "no thanks" and took more brocolli. That silly kid loves brocolli!
Thankfully he didn't have the option to pick carrots over Kit-Kats cause I'm sure he would have, and Kit-Kats are one of my favorites!
What a great time of year this is!
It's been a lot of fun Halloween-ing...now onto Thanksgiving!