Halloween 2011

So... Halloween was back on Monday, but I wanted to the the last post about the mountains enough time as the top post for everyone to read it.  But I didn't intend for the next post to take quite so long to write.

It was kind of a long week for a teething Libby and me.  Fortunately, it wasn't overly busy as far as planned activities and fortunately Libby still did well with her sleep (read: if she was uncomfortable at night, she didn't make enough noise to wake me.)  However, Daddy was out of town from Tuesday through late on Thursday and I had almost no interaction with family or friends other than Libby during that time.  And I needed some apparently, because I was nearly at my breaking point when Michael got home on Thursday.  Folks, we even had to leave gymnastics early on Tuesday.  Every minor thing that didn't go Libby's way was a major, crying, breakdown crisis. And she threw several purposeful tantrums on the floor, I guess just to see what would happen.  Those, I chose to find merely amusing and didn't let them get to me.

But first, it was Halloween, which was fun!

Since we weren't planning on visiting too many houses, what with Libby barely eating candy, not actually saying "trick-or-treat," an early bedtime and the like, we thought it would be fun to have some friends over to celebrate and play around each other in their costumes.

The Arnolds came...

and Ryan was a doctor!

And the Pearsons came, too!

Ty was an indian and Tyler was Indiana Jones!

Sadly, I didn't get a good family picture of them, but to be fair, we didn't get one of us, either.

Libby was great about getting into her costume, despite a bit of a short nap.  However, she didn't like when I started stuffing tissue paper inside her costume to make it fit better and fluff it out a bit.  (First meltdown of the week.)  We got over that and moved past it.  And then I tried to get Michael to take a photo of the two of us.  Libby did not want that and had another meltdown.  But she got over it when the Arnolds arrived and I managed to get plenty of photos of Libby!

Michael worked desperately to finish our pumpkin to place at the front door and came up with a great design idea, as always!

We ate chili (which Libby, of course, loved), baked apples, salad and mini cornbread muffins and played and snapped as many photos as possible.  Then the Arnolds went to trick-or-treat in their neighborhood and we took Ty and Libby around to some of the houses in our neighborhood.  They picked up on the idea pretty quickly!  They walked at first, but wound up in the wagon before the evening fun was over.  And Libby ran in to her friend, MK, from across the street!  Thanks to MK's mom for actually having a camera!

Libby and Ty wound up sharing Ty's bucket to collect their treats and we parents divvied them up at home before the Pearsons left.  Boy do we know that'll be the last year we get away with that!  I'm guessing once they realize what that candy is, they won't be so open to "sharing."  But it's nice that they were this year.

Also, the Friday before Halloween, Libby's gymnastics place had a Halloween party for all the kids and Libby attended as a UGA cheerleader.  She also created a fun Halloween craft (with a lot of help...)

They drew a ghost on one of the trampolines!  Libby LOVES the trampolines.

Oh- I started listening to "Bossypants" this week.  Funny!  Now I'm off to catch up on stuff I should have been doing instead of blogging...