Happy Halloween!

We kicked off the Halloween festivities last Sunday at our church's Fall Festival. We have gone to the festival for a few years now in mixed weather, but this year's weather was a sunny and warm 80 degrees. Boomer and I wore shorts! In the years before Emmy, we tagged along with the Houstons to the festival to see Maddox and Zander dressed up in their costumes. It is certainly even more special now with our own little one. The Fall Festival is a fun community event with a trunk-or-treat, games, a hayride, and other entertainment. This year, Emmy dressed up as Minnie, a costume that was kindly passed along by my friend Sarah. Even though Emmy didn't have much choice in the matter, it was really perfect because she LOVES Minnie: she has a Minnie stuffed animal, Minnie blanket, and Minnie underwear. We recycled the Minnie ears from Maddox's 1st birthday, and with a little bit of eyeliner for whiskers, the outfit was complete. We were only at the Fall Festival for about an hour, so proportional to our time, I took waaaay too many photos! Enjoy these pictures of our Minnie Mouse, fire fighter, and policeman!

On the actual day of Halloween, there were severe thunderstorms predicted, so most of the neighborhoods cancelled or postponed their trick-or-treating. Our original plan to join the Houstons in their neighborhood turned in to pizza indoors and then early bedtimes. It's probably for the best that rain interfered, because Emmy was a little off from all the excitement at school that day. She even fell asleep in the car on the way to the Houston's, meaning she was a bit moody when we first got there. She rallied through dinner, and we made it home for a reasonable bedtime. Here is a look back at our Halloweens over the years!

2017 -- 2018 -- 2019

Earlier in the week on an evening that Boomer was home, I had planned on carving our pumpkin. Boomer convinced me to play outside in the backyard instead, saying that carving the pumpkin may be too traumatic for Emmy (eye roll!) Perhaps he may be right; it is true that Emmy has become quite attached to our little pumpkin family on the front porch. Even though our pumpkin went uncarved this year, it was special to spend some time outside when the temperatures were in the 60s and there was still some post-dinner daylight. Daylight Savings is this weekend, so it will mean dark evenings - boo! Boomer and Emmy tried out the new baseball set that she got for her birthday from Granny and Paw Paw. It started out pretty promising...

...but I think she will need more practice! There were no Daddies harmed in the making of these memories!

Reading at bedtime continues to be one of my favorite parts of our nightly routine. Once all the tasks of the day are complete, I love sitting with Emmy in our chair and reading books from her bookshelf and from the library. There are a few books that she insists that Daddy read - this being one of them! You can see why both Daddy and Emmy love it!

I wore my Pumpkin Smuggler shirt one more time on Halloween. Here I am dressed up as a 37-week pregnant momma in a high school bathroom! Yay for reaching full term!