As far as holidays went in 2020, Halloween was probably one of our most normal ones. It helped that our activities were all outdoors. Last year, it was miserably cold on Halloween, but this year we had pretty mild weather. Here’s the recap:
This year, Brooklyn really wanted to be a lion for Halloween. But not just any lion. It HAD to be a realistic looking lion with a mane…haha. Savannah’s favorite animal is a cheetah, so she decided that she wanted to be a cheetah once she heard Brooklyn was going to be a lion. I thought it was hard to find the “perfect” lion costume online…until I started looking for a cheetah! That was even harder. We ended up going with a leopard costume and pretending it was a cheetah :) Since the big girls chose animal costumes, I decided to stick with the theme and pick out an animal costume for Abigail too. I took advantage of the fact that Abigail isn’t quite old enough to be super opinionated about costumes and could pretty much be convinced to wear anything. So I picked out the cutest parrot costume and sold her on it. Being a parrot was so perfect for Abigail since she loves to talk!
This was our second year to participate in Spook the Lake, a trick-or-treat by boat event at Smith Lake, and this year it was on Saturday, October 17th. Our little zoo animals were excited to get their life jackets on and collect some candy!
Some people went all out decorating their docks for all the little trick-or-treaters. It was fun to see what everyone came up with!
The weather was great again this year. We probably stopped at 15 docks at least, but I lost count. Captain Paw made sure his granddaughters got plenty of candy!
This year, we had a fishing net on the boat with us, which made collecting the candy from each dock a breeze. I forgot to bring their candy buckets, so we used Walmart grocery bags instead to divide up the spoil…
This was the easiest trick or treating ever for the kids. Abigail kept saying, “YUUMMMM! I LOOOOVE this! It’s my favorite!” about every type of candy she tried…she even said that about cheese balls…haha.
Charlie was looking so festive in his Halloween collar!
Paw had a map showing where the participating docks were, but the girls still wanted to help us look for them as we got closer.
One benefit of trick or treating during the day is that all of the spooky decorations don’t seem as scary as they do at night…
At one point during our adventure, a giant wave came over the front of the boat and water rushed from the front all the way to the back of the boat like a flowing river! Abigail fell down and got her feet all wet. It was hilarious…it looked like a tidal wave, and it came out of nowhere when we were close to another boat. We must have hit it just right.
Brooklyn liked holding out the net for the people to put candy in. Sometimes they had a net too, and they just dumped the candy from their net into ours. It was pretty quick and easy!
The girls had already eaten quite a bit of candy before we got back to Paw and Rae Rae’s house. That’s part of the fun of trick or treating this way…there’s plenty of time to eat lots of candy while you are waiting to arrive at the next dock :)
At one point, Brooklyn laid down at the back of the boat…maybe she’d already eaten too much candy by this point!
Mom decorated their dock as a “witch hospital” since she was still in her sling after having shoulder surgery. I thought it was very creative!
Of course, we had to get some candy from Rae Rae before we got off the boat…
…and then we helped Rae Rae pass out candy to a few more boats too. It was such a fun afternoon!
The girls all fell asleep on the way home after such an eventful day.
Most people passed out treat bags full of candy and not just a piece or two. So we came home with SO MUCH candy. These candy hands were my favorite…so creative!
The many faces of Abigail, looking festive in her Halloween shirt and candy corn hairbow :) I think she looks just like a mini Travis in the bottom-right picture!
We decided to do something different and fun this year for Halloween. We came up with a Halloween candy hunt for some of our friends in the neighborhood and also for the Loveless boys since they were in quarantine due to COVID exposure and were going to have to miss out on the normal Halloween festivities.
I wrote a little poem and we left one at each house’s front door on October 30th after school, letting the kids inside know what we had done :)
We put candy inside some Halloween-colored eggs for our neighborhood friends…and for the Lovelesses, we hid the candy inside some Pokeballs leftover from a birthday party we went to a few years ago. Carter is currently a big Pokemon fan ;) I think everyone enjoyed it and had fun, including us. I told the girls we needed to be as quiet as possible when hiding the eggs so that we wouldn’t get caught. Brooklyn and Savannah loved leaving the note at the door, ringing the doorbell, and running away as fast as they could. It was fun! I thought it would be something fun for our friends/cousins, and it was a good way for our kids to see the fun in doing something nice for others!
I didn’t take any pictures of the girls hiding the eggs in our neighbors’ yards, but we did take a few once we got to Tyler and Alisha’s. We decided to stick around and watch the boys hunt while we sat in the car :)
Me and my little helpers!
The girls were excited to see Carter, Luke, and Barrett…even from 6 feet away ;) We enjoyed the afternoon!
The next day was Halloween, and it was time to get ready for the annual Halloween party at the Hesters’ house. It’s always an outdoor party each year, so we felt comfortable going since it wasn’t an indoor thing. Travis carved our pumpkin after the girls helped pick out the design. It was more involved than the one we did last year, but I thought it turned out cute!
I forgot to get a picture of it up close, but our pumpkin was the one that said “Boo to you!” with the little ghost beside the writing. Brooklyn also wanted to bring her Pete the Cat pumpkin to the party so she could enter it in the pumpkin contest. Neither of our pumpkins won…as you can see, the pumpkin on the back left was amazing. Juls literally chiseled out the face a little bit at a time, and it was clearly head and shoulders above the competition ;) We joked that the only time we’ll ever win the contest is if the Weatherfords aren’t at the party!
Travis and I decided to dress up as zookeepers to go with our little zoo animals. Pretty fitting, as we sometimes feel like our house is a literal zoo…haha. We borrowed the jackets and hats from Jeff and Melissa, so it was an easy costume to put together.
I also made us some zookeeper badges so that we looked a little more official :)
We had a great time at the party! They had a pretty good turnout considering the times, and we were glad that there were plenty of kids there for the girls to play with. Abigail enjoyed playing with Mikayla and the Broadwell kids on the little kid trampoline. She also loved telling everyone, “I’m a purrot!” :)
We love Mikayla!!
The girls each got a full bucket’s worth of candy…to add to all the candy we’d already gotten at the lake!
The adults usually sit in a semi-circle and let the kids walk around and get candy from each person. It’s hard to get any decent pictures at night, but the girls loved it.
The big thing afterward is pigging out on candy while sitting under the trampoline…haha. It’s become a tradition the past few years.
Even though we didn’t need ANY more candy, we still took the girls to trick or treat in the Hesters’ neighborhood at probably 4 or 5 houses after we finished up at the party. It was a fun night and good timing for the time change to “fall back” an hour…
Of course Abigail didn’t sleep late the next morning…she was up early destroying her room…
and pouring cereal all over the floor ;)
We are making memories and plenty of messes over here! Thanks for reading!
