Halloween Festivities

Every year we have our annual pumpkin carving contest. This was our 6th one!  It's a fun excuse to get together, eat, drink, and carve pumpkins.  This year was a little different because all of the kiddos were able to walk (last year they all laid on a blanket and didn't go anywhere).

We had more people over than who participated in the carving (some people just aren't cut out for the pumpkin guts and creativity).

From Left to Right: Nick, Nichole, Me, Dad, Tyler

I literally could not think of a single thing to carve, so I went very VERY boring...

It's fun to see how creative Ty has gotten in the last 6 years carving pumpkins.  When he met he didn't have a creative bone in his body, and now I think he saves all his creativity for this one day of the year and goes all out.

It wasn't until this year I realized Beggar's Night is a Des Moines only tradition (read the article here).  I was sitting at work and everyone was talking about how weird it is that trick-or-treat is the day before Halloween and how WEIRD it was that the kids all had to have a joke prepared in order to receive candy. 

While Harper wasn't able to tell a joke this year she knew EXACTLY what to do in order to collect the most candy possible.  It took us taking her to two houses before she realized what the "game" was.  After that she'd run to the next house, climb the stairs, peek her head through the glass windows that flank the door and smile.  At first she would gingerly take one piece of candy and move on.  Towards the end she would try to took a handful.  If the homeowner would hand the candy to Harper and she didn't get the amount she would want she would sign for more and if they didn't respond to that she'd stomp her feet and whine.  Needless to say we got a lot more candy then we thought we were going to.  Next year, we'll have to spend more time coaching her on what kind of candy to get.... :)

When we got home we let her play with all of her candy not thinking she knew what it was other than fun, noisy packaging.  She had fun taking it all out of the bag and putting it back in.  Have you heard of the saying, "Silence is golden, unless you have a toddler, then it means trouble"?  That is so pertinent to us.  She was sitting talking to herself playing with the candy, and all of a sudden it got really quiet. We looked over over and she was eating a snickers bar... Not sure how it got opened, but she was definitely enjoying her first snickers bar!