Any Excuse...

Have you heard the saying, "Any Excuse for a Party?" My siblings and I believe this with our whole hearts!

Birthday you say? Where's the cake?

The leaves are starting to fall? I will bring the egg nog.

Halloween? Bring on the candy!

However, we did have an even better reason to all be together this weekend - my sister, Molly, blessed her baby, Suzanne, Sunday morning. But Halloween was the night before so we got our candy on! (Can I say that?) We started it off with Luke's birthday party in the morning, then headed to Pocatello for two Trunk-or-Treats (three if you count the night before), a visit to Grandmas Davis' where we had donuts and cider, Trick-or-Treating for two hours in her neighborhood, then capped it off with a visit to the local Spooky Barn.

Here are a few highlights from the evening:

Ally, after a few Trunk-or-Treats, trick-or-treating and donuts, was obviously coming down from a sugar high. From the back of the van, we heard: "The best part of Halloween? FREE CANDY! Oh, and costumes." (She was a candy corn for Halloween. I made the costume from a pattern on the Internet and she bought candy corn earrings and a necklace with her allowance money.)

Luke nearly peed his pants as we went to one of the scariest houses in the Idaho State University neighborhood. A family decorates their yard as a spooky maze and then terrorize the tiny trick-or-treaters. They wind around a lighted path, led by one of the owner's kids. They pause to look at "scary" things, like a dummy filled with leaves, and move on to a cage with a another leaf-filled "dead" inmate. As the guide tells the children to lean in close, that you can almost hear him moan though dead, suddenly the inmate comes to life, screeching and rushing the bars. Luke bolted so fast, he took some of the lighted path with him.

At the Spooky Barn, our kids were excited and intrigued to go through this spook alley. However, other cousins were not. In fact, as soon as the other cousins (who were older, by the way) got into the front door, they started screaming uncontrollably. This tainted Emma and Luke, who just started bawling. That was it. (If Ryan had been there, he would have forced them through.)

Clark was just fun to watch waddle around in his bulky skunk costume.

I think it is safe to say that a good time was had by all.