Halloween 2012

I know I'm a little slow on this post considering we just had Thanksgiving. Oh well. Griff's first Halloween was pretty uneventful last year. He was only a month old and I was in Colorado with him. This year we had 3 days of Halloween parties and trunk-or-treating, but didn't actually go out on Halloween night since trick-or-treating with a 1 year old who could care less seemed...unnecessary. Instead we hung out at Brandon's grandma's house and then roasted marshmallows in Jaime's backyard. Much better.

A note about "Trunk-or-Treat". I have to mention this because we never had this growing up. It's probably risen out of the changes in society making door to door candy collecting less safe, but I'm not really a fan. And I'm not sure if it's just in Utah or across the nation, but I know it's affecting my son's future Halloween experiences. For those who don't know what it is, groups of people (in this case local church congregations) will gather together on or before Halloween to have all the kids collect candy from a line up of cars in the parking lot. They just go from trunk to trunk. It takes 5 minutes and requires very little effort. On an up note, our ward also had a kid's carnival that the teens put together. It was really fun: cake walk, donut game, shoe toss game, three legged races, face painting. I have to say, as an adult, it was fun to socialize with all the other adults while this was going on. But after the kids ran through the parking lot, it was over. Several kids tried to double shop our car, as if we didn't notice, and some of them even tried for a third visit...greedy little monsters. Maybe I'm old fashion, but I prefer door-to-door. And I prefer the kids to have to work for their candy. Where I come from (the Midwest), we had to tell a joke for candy, not just say "trick-or-treat". And to make matters more complicated, some wards held their trunk-or-treat on Halloween night which makes for getting out on the appropriate date, but it pulls otherwise eligible home off the trick-or-treating grid since they are all in a parking lot somewhere instead of anxiously waiting for the doorbell to ring. But the kids like it, so I guess that's good. And after all this discussion on it, I didn't even get any pictures of it.

Trying on before buying

One of the Academy staff made this lion beanie for him

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Thrown together last minute. Better in theory than functional at a party

Dixie State Homecoming parade and Carnival (couldn't find the bottom half of his costume so we improvised

loved his hood

with Gram

Party at Ally's

Griff's pumpkin had the coolest stalk (is that what it's called??)

My pumpkin!

Brandon and Blake on the patio using manly carving tools

Griff's first pumpkin

We didn't get around to carving that other one.