Halloween

 

After missing out on the Halloween carnival last year due to Covid, we were back to our annual tradition...but this time without Joey and Hannah. 

Officially the carnival is for elementary school kids and younger, so they are just too old. Ellie still wanted to go, so we invited some of her school friends to go with us.

A lot of Classical kids actually attend Emmanuel Faith, so as we went throughout the carnival we added more and more of their friends to our group. I wish I had gotten a picture, but by the end of the night, we had quite the gaggle of fourth grade girls.

A couple of days later, it was time for Halloween. We don't always go all out on our costumes, but Andy had been wanting to do the Scooby Doo theme for a while.

We were going to do it last year, but we didn't want to waste such a fun theme during the weird Covid Halloween, and we didn't want to have to wear masks.

I'm so glad we saved it for this year. It was the first year our heights were all perfect: Shaggy was the tallest, then Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Scooby (at least he's the shortest when on all fours).

As always, the kids went trick-or-treating with the Levitons.

These two are so sweet together!

Ellie also found Cameron and Gabby to trick-or-treat with. Their ghost costumes went perfectly with Scooby.

One of my favorite parts about Halloween is getting to see our neighbors and other friends. Every year we run into my friend, Sonja, and her daughter, Charlotte, because they have family in our neighborhood. Every Halloween Sonja and I talk about how it's been too long since we've seen each other so we make plans to have breakfast together on Veteran's day since Sonja is a teacher and has the day off. We laughed when we saw each other this year, and Sonja said, "It must be time for our annual breakfast!"

Ellie was SUPER excited to trade candy after we were done trick or treating. It may have been her favorite part of the night.

After the girls had a chance to trade, the five of us went to Joey's friend's house. We've never gone anywhere for Halloween before, so it was fun to try something new. When we first got there, the kids trick-or-treated for a little, but then they came back and hung out at the house. There was PLENTY of candy there for them! 

These six have been good friends since fourth grade. Joey goes to a different school than the rest of them now, so we try to hang out with them whenever we can.