Halloween Happenings

Let me first start out by saying I'm having blogging issues and cannot get my paragraphs to left align. Okay so Halloween would have been totally awesome had Ella Ann felt well, Spencer not have bad neck pain all day, it would have been sunny and it would have been warm. Despite the aforementioned issues, we drove down to the Highlands and went trick-or-treating in our old neighborhood where we knew there was good candy to be treated and lots and lots of amazing decorations and tons of people. We got the kids all dolled up in their festive outfits/costumes and stayed on "Halloween Row" (a street filled to the brim with decked out houses and lots of trick-or-treaters) for over an hour. Spencer and I were chilly with the misty rain and wind so we knew Ella Ann and Rane were probably freezing so we didn't stay out as long as we would have liked. Oh well, Ella Ann still racked it in! I should have practiced picking out candy with her and given her examples of what candy to avoid because the poor child would pick out of a 10-pound basket of really good candy one Jolly Rancher, an Almond Joy or a Bit O' Honey. Gross! She was a brave girl and would go to a few doors all by herself! She looked SO cute in her pink butterfly costume, which was a mix of her ballerina leotard that she wears to ballet, a shirt underneath because it was cold, church tights, regular shoes and the wings, wand and antennas were from Party City. She looked great! Rane wore his ghost shirt and candy corn hat and actually left the hat on for quite a while!

Earlier that day while Spencer was at work and Rane was sleeping, Ella Ann and I made Halloween brownies....well, sort of. I tried really hard to get the icing purple (I was out of red so I couldn't make orange) but gave up after about 5 minutes of stirring in tons of food coloring and it not changing so we ended up with a nice shade of sea foam green with candy corn on top! I ate half the pan yesterday. They were gooooood! I knew Ella Ann wasn't feeling so hot when she ate a little cereal for breakfast and only half of her brownie. She only ate a rice cake and a sucker after we got home because she said her belly hurt, which she's been saying for the last 2 days on and off. She would be fine for a while and then complain of feeling sick but she was great while we were out trick-or-treating. She went to bed fine and then I woke up at 1:30 a.m. this morning to her screaming at the top of her lungs so I raced in her room and she had thrown up all over herself and the bed. Spencer gave her a quick bath while I cleaned the bed. She threw up again today after a 3.5-hour nap. I'm just praying she's over it quickly and the rest of us do not get it.

Icing the brownies.

She told me last week that she made a Monarch butterfly at school and she came home with it Friday and wore it all morning yesterday.

Brownies with cream cheese icing and candy corn! Ahhhhhhh!


Ready to go! Dad got me the hat while we were in Disney.


We had to walk under the spider webs to get to the porch and spiders would drop down and scare the kids!

She wasn't too sure about the witch handing out candy!

Going all by herself!

Such a happy little trick-or-treater!

One of the first houses we went to was covered in smoke with their "graveyard" out front.


Going with Daddy to a "scary" one.

This was one of the decorations next door to the above house. These people go all out!

A blurry picture, but it was the best I got of her from the front.

Going through her loot with Spencer when we got home.

On a side note, I just remembered something of great importance to me that was taken. I keep a journal for both kids from the day they were born until they are 2. I write in it each month about what they are doing, what a good baby they were, what they are eating, how they are sleeping, how much I love them, what it was like to bring them home from the hospital, etc. I hand wrote Ella Ann's but I typed Rane's on our laptop because it was easier. So all 9 months of his life are gone. I have to say that was the most sentimental thing stolen from us because it was for Rane when he is older so that he will know all about how he was as a baby and how we doted on him. I thought of it this morning because I needed to write in it soon because he will be 10 months old next week. I will try my best to think of everything over the last 9 months when I start a new one, but it's just not the same.