Halloween 2015

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone had a fun, safe holiday. We had a fun time and actually had festivities two days instead of just one. Lucky us!

We started by going Trunk-or-treating at my dad's church Trunk-or-treat. For those of you who don't know, trunk-or-treating consists of people handing out treats from the back of the vehicles in a parking lot, usually a school or church, to the costumed kids. I guess it started as a way for kids to safely trick or treat to people they knew or something like that. A lot of the churches around here do it, but ours wasn't and it was a good time to see my dad, so we went. Here's us:

Cleopatra, SUU football player, and Julius Ceasar

Steve and I decided that next year, we're choosing warmer costumes...we were pretty chilly and the weather wasn't even as bad as it could be for this time of year.

Matt had no clue what was happening. The costumes kind of freaked him out at first and he didn't want to carry his pumpkin or walk on his own. I had been working on getting him to say "Trick or Treat" all day but he had been pretty unenthusiastic. We walked past a bunch of cars, looking for my dad. When we found him, I had Matt say the magic words. He hesitated, but finally muttered something resembling them. HIs eyes lit up when Grandpa put candy into his pumpkin! Whoa! We chatted with Grandpa for a bit, then found my step-sister and her two girls and went around to cars with them for a bit. Matt's "trick or treat" got more hearty with every car as the candy poured into his bucket. He's definitely got his mama's sweet tooth. He also was very generous with the "thank you's" and received quite a few "aaaahhh"s because he's so stinking cute.

We stayed less than an hour before heading to my church's Halloween dinner. As we walked into the building, Steve threatened to leave if he was the only one dressed up. I assured him that most likely, we'd be the only adults dressed up and told him to buck up. Turns out, I was wrong, a couple other adults were also dressed up and several children. There were a couple games for the kids, and Matt loved the fish pond (more candy) but didn't want to get his face painted or do anything else. I'm learning that my little man is a little timid. I'm okay with this. We ate chili, corn bread, and salad then headed home because Matt hadn't napped and was getting ornery. It was time to get him his milk, relax a bit, put him to bed, and then collapse for the rest of the night.

The next day, we did a couple things around the house before setting off to buy a new dining room table. I won't go into why in this post, maybe later. We came home and got ready to go tailgating at the SUU football game with my dad and Paula. I really enjoy tailgating. We keep it really simple - hot dogs/brats, veggies, chips, fruit, and a dessert. We got there around 12:30, a little before Dad, and bought some SUU sweatshirts in case the game was chilly. Dad arrived around 1pm and we just hung out and ate for a couple hours. My niece Brooke was dancing with her dance school, so we got to watch her. Her parents had left for the Utah football game and her brother was hanging out with friends, so we invited her to eat with us and to go to the game with us. She did. I also saw my old boss, Eric, and his wife at the tailgating party. His daughter was dancing. I couldn't believe how old she was!! It was good to see them and to chat a bit. The years I worked for him were some of my best work years.

The game started a little slow but picked up and became a fun game to watch. It was soooo warm, though! We had all dressed for chilly weather, so it was a little uncomfortable. SUU maintained a lead the whole game but there were a few tense times when we thought they'd lose. They ended up winning - Yay!

We left the game a little early (after the 3rd quarter) because we were all getting hungry, especially Matt, and I had made a soup in the crock pot earlier in the day. Dad had church meetings to get ready for and Paula wanted to see Macey off on her Sadie Hawkins date, so it was just us and Brooke for soup. I had also wanted to leave a little early because it was prime trick-or-treat time. I love, love, love handing out candy to trick-or-treaters and seeing their costumes. So, the rest of the night, we just hung out and handed out candy. Steve took Brooke to her Halloween party around 7pm, we put Matt to bed around 8pm, and then sat out on our driveway to pass out candy to lower the chance of waking Matt. Just before 9pm, we packed up our chairs and candy and headed inside. The number of kids had dwindled and we were getting cold. We came inside and had a nice warm mug of hot chocolate. A perfect ending to a nice Halloween.

Next year, I think we'll take Matt trick-or-treating for the first time. I decided that he had received more than enough candy from trunk-or-treating the night before and didn't need more. He's young enough to not realize what he missed.

Julie :)