It was the week of Halloween!  Which meant that on Monday evening we got ourselves some pumpkins and carved them up into jack-o-lanterns!  Savannah was at work and we missed her!

On Wednesday, Bethany had her ballet recital.  They danced to "The Witch Doctor," and got to wear their Halloween costumes.  Bethany was "Pinkalicious" this year for Halloween.  She loved being all pink, although she did not love the pink hair spray.  It made us both choke!

Halloween was on Thursday!  We got everyone all dressed up in the morning, of course.  The elementary school kids, at least.  The older girls looked Halloween-y, too, but they were in a rush to get out the door so I missed getting their pictures!

Later that day, I saw these three cuties again at the elementary school's Halloween Parade!

So, cute!  Right?  After dinner, we drove over to Grandma's to trick or treat at her house and then back to our neighborhood to take the four youngest around.  Sarah and Mariah both went to friends' parties this year.  Savannah manned the door for us.  She handed out candy during the Main Street trick or treat at Funfinity during the afternoon so she was really in the groove!

Halloween is kind of a lot of work and I am always glad when it's over, but it is fun to be out with the kids when they trick or treat.  They're so happy and the neighbors are all so nice to them.  It's sweet.  It's fun.  It's a good experience to share!

We have had more sick kids this week.  Beth suffered from general malaise all week.  Cheyenne was struck down Wednesday and Calianne on Friday.  Chey stayed strong through Halloween, but I kept them both home from school on Friday.  They've never been sick on the same day before and they kind of liked it!  Guess what they did on their sick day home?  They played school! Funny, huh?  I guess you just can't keep good kids down.

We also had a lot of leaves to play in this week!  Ben, of course, rode his bike through them with his friend Mason.

On Saturday, we raked them all up!  Our front yard was much easier than previous years!  I guess that's what happens when you take down a 50 foot Sycamore tree.  Our back yard, though, already looks like we didn't rake at all because the leaves just keep on falling!  However, we don't have any walnuts to pick up this year in our back yard!  I walked into our shed last week and all the buckets in the shed were full of walnuts.  "What is going on?" I wondered.  Did Kevin . . . Did the kids . . . ?  Then I realized it was the squirrels!!  They completely harvested our trees and when they ran out of room in their own nest, they had been "squirreling away" all the gazillions of nuts they could find in every possible space.  How funny for us that they decided on our buckets!  It's like a Disney movie come true!  We got a great laugh out of it!  It's so awesome!