Halloween

More pictures to come...

We had a lot of fun for Halloween. In preparation, I asked the boys what they wanted to be. Josh said he wanted to be a ghost. (This would be the third year in a row...) Carter said he wanted to be a witch. Hah. Ryan said there would be no witches allowed for his boys, so Carter, Josh, and I looked online for costumes under the name of "boy witch". Carter didn't want to be a wizard, and he only wanted to be a warlock for about 5 minutes, until he decided it was too scary. So that idea went out the window....luckily, we saw some knight costumes online and viola! Both boys wanted to be knights. I typed "how to make knight costumes" into youtube -isn't the internet a crazy thing?- and knew that all this cardboard breastplate creating stuff should be handed over to Ryan. What we ended up with was a helmet, a breastplate, swords (from Ryan's previous creative moments) and boot covers all made out of card board and duct tape. They were so cute! I wanted Landon to be a dragon, but the boys wanted him to wear the bumblebee costume we have. They seem to think that it's some right of passage for each Allen baby to wear the bumblebee for their first, and maybe second, Halloween. Since I had yet to attempt making a dragon costume, it didn't take me long to agree.

The beloved bumble bee costume.

Josh and Carter with their buddy Ashton.

We first went to our ward "Fall Harvest" party, which was a chili cook off. Umm, I tried to make some chili for this thing. First bad idea was substituting ingredients for the ones I didn't have. Second bad idea was trying to fix the resulting chili by using my new "figure-out-what-flavors-are-missing-and-add-them-in" policy I got from watching the Food Network show Chopped. (I usually can't figure out what is missing, and then make very interesting flavor combos...) Anyway, after a lot of sweat and near misses, I finish the chili and ask Ryan if it's edible or too embarrassing to take to the ward cook off. He tastes it, thinks about it for a minute, and says, "Well, it's nothing to write home about, but it's okay for chili. Just don't get it judged." Awesome. Well, I end up getting it judged, and guess what? It won for "best traditional" chili. I might add that most of the chilis won for something...but at least I didn't win the "tootie frootie" or "best smelling" certificate!

On the actual day of Halloween, we went over to our friends Tiffany and Aaron's house for dinner and then went trick-or-treating with them. They live in a nice neighborhood...and man it was busy! Here in Lawton you can trick-or-treat from 6-8pm. Once 6pm hit, Aaron was at the front door giving away candy. They had a huge line from their house bending back down the street, three to four people thick! Ryan stayed with Aaron while Tiffany and I headed out with the kids. Her son Ashton is three and was a fireman. Her little baby Kapri was a cupcake. We had fun, but didn't get a ton. Landon had had a enough pretty soon into the whole process and was screaming and fussy and trying to get out of the stroller. Carter kept tripping and having a hard time getting up because his breastplate doesn't bend. So I had a screaming baby in the front of the stroller, by the handles sat a squishy-face-uncomfortable-in-his-unbending armor-Carter, and Josh, walking along, barking, very loudly, like a dog because he figured it would calm Landon down. And I was in some sort of la-la land I guess, because I was walking around like we weren't crazy. It was a lot of fun, actually. Fun memories.

Talking about memories....I have one Halloween memory that stands out. When I was little, I was into anything princess and anything that made me gorgeous. So naturally I was anything beautiful and girly for Halloween. One year, I must have been around seven or eight, I was a ballerina. (I just typed ballet dancer, hah.) I had the pink leotard, the tights, some shoes, and the perfect tutu. I was so excited to go and look pretty for everyone to see. Sadly for me, though, Halloween ended up being on a freezing cold day, with plenty of snow. And now we come to the point in the story where I disagree with my dad's view of it. He says that I refused to wear a coat because "ballerinas don't wear coats". I think I probably just suggested that I go with out one and see how I felt. Whatever the case, my dad came up with this horrific (but genius, I concede) plan to make me a fat ballerina. He had me first put on snow pants and a sweat shirt. Yes, you read that right. Snow pants. Then he put my tights and leotard on top of those snow pants and then bulked up my middle by adding some stuffing. I looked hilarious, but I was so mad! As we went trick or treating, people got a kick out of my "costume". I was walking down the street and someone yelled out, "Hey look! A fat ballerina!!" I was not happy. To have such high hopes of being so so cute literally blown up in front of my very eyes was truly tragic....Luckily for my vanity, my dad let me be a normal ballerina at the school fair which was more important to look good at anyway. It almost made up for the trick or treating part.

Is it just me or does everyone else look a little underdressed?