A Month of Thankfulness (and Halloween pics)

An excerpt from this blog, November 2, 2012:

Each year during the month of November, many of my Facebook friends post something they are thankful for each day.  I'm going to do the same thing, but on this blog rather than Facebook.  It will challenge me to write each day of the month!

I'm going to do the same this year, and I'm so excited to start!  I'm starting off with a bang, because there are three things I am thankful for today:

1.  Chet's Grandma Jean.  Today is her 90th birthday, so even though she doesn't read this blog, I'd like to sort of dedicate this post to her and mention how thankful we are for her, and for all of the other wonderful women in our family.  Grandma Jean is a fun lady, and I wish we could see her more often (she lives in Arizona).

2.  As always on November 1st, I am ridiculously thankful that Halloween is over!  I am always so excited to pull out the Halloween garb on October 1st (toys, books, shirts, socks, bows, etc.), but by October 31st (actually, before that) I am OVER IT.  Despite all of my Halloween Grinch tendencies, this Halloween was more fun than I expected, because this is the first year that Sydney (and therefore Lorelei) really understood costumes and trick-or-treating.  They had their own opinions about how to dress up, and their excitement was contagious (sometimes when you have young kids that don't really understand holidays it's just downright exhausting to be excited enough for everyone).

3.  I am so thankful for the amazing neighborhood we live in.  I am in awe, daily, that God landed us in this small (but functional) house with plenty of character, on a street with several great families, and in an area that is so close to Chet's work.  It was truly an answered prayer.

On that note, here are a bunch of the neighborhood kids before trick-or-treating began:

Several neighbors were taking pictures with really nice cameras and at a better angle, so I will post more pictures once I get those via e-mail.  

Before I go on, I have to mention that there was a little bit of Halloween drama in our house earlier in October over a Halloween costume.  We took the girls to TJ Maxx to pick out their costumes; Lorelei chose Tinkerbell and Sydney chose Rapunzel (the costumes at TJ Maxx were not actually advertised as Tinkerbell, Rapunzel, etc., but it was obvious what the costume was supposed to be, and they were GORGEOUS).  Anyway, Sydney wanted to be a mermaid, but the only mermaid costume available was a size 6X, and way too big for Sydney.  So she tried on a few more costumes (including Elsa and Snow White) and chose the Rapunzel costume.  However, a few days after the purchase, Sydney started voicing doubts about her choice ("voicing doubts" is a nice term for "whining").  So we returned the costume and decided to wait a little while before choosing another.  A few days later she said she wanted to be a witch, and she didn't mention dressing up as anything else (there was no way I was going to deal with her changing her mind over and over before Halloween).  Target happened to have four different witch costumes, and would you believe that the cheapest costume ($15) was the cutest one they had?  The witch hat was included, and I bought the costume while they were running a buy one get one free sale, so the broom was completely free.  Go me!

Here are the girls in their original costumes, the day after we purchased them:

Lorelei was so proud to be Tinkerbell; I admire her confidence in her decision.

Here's Syd in her newly-purchased witch costume:

And here are pictures from last night:

Our friends Jed and Paige are in town visiting, so Chet and Jed took the girls trick-or-treating while Paige, Bubby and I stayed at home to hand out (and eat) candy.

Do you like Bubby's candy corn costume?  I found the hat at Target (it had an orange flower sewn to it that I had to cut off), and we dyed the bottom half of a white onesie orange.  Here's a visual explanation of that process:

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween!