Happy Halloween!

This past weekend we celebrated Halloween Tracy-style:  with a big ol' party.  Amanda and I co-hosted this event at my house, and we had a little over 110 adults and children make it to the bash.  The house was swagged with orange and black everywhere and looked very festive.  Guests arrived at 4 pm and were greeted by 11 game stations for the little ones.  We even had a small parade on our street for all the costumed kids to participate in.  The party was a smash hit, but I was happy to see everyone leave by 7:30pm.  I was exhausted from the festivities!  

Lollipop pull game

Parading on the street

Donut eating contest (supposed to be without hands, but oh well!)

As many of the kids as we could round up for photos

Besties!

The hostesses of this fantastic party (if I do say so myself)

On Monday night we took the kids trick-or-treating with their cousins.  We did some family photos and headed up to Michael and Shannon's place.  There we had Laney, Brodie, Kiersten, Liam and  Brooke line up for photos (some not very willingly...)

The menagerie:  Zookeeper Patrick, Tracy the Zebra, Liam the Lion, and  Laney the Elephant (of course!)

My little trick-or-treaters

Cousins!

 After pictures were snapped, Liam and Brooke went in their strollers and we set off down the street.  Laney was apprehensive of approaching doors at first, and requested that I go with her and hold her hand.  6 houses later and she wanted to try holding Kiersten's hand and going without me.  2 houses later she was running to the front door, squealing with glee.  No adults needed now!  She would yell out "trick-or-treat" and then race to the next house to snag some more loot.  She and her cousins had the best time speed-treating up and down their street.

 We headed back to our house at 7pm so that Liam could go to bed and Patrick could watch the Chargers on Monday Night Football.  Shesh and I took Laney up and down our street for another hour.  We even took Toby along.  Thankfully he was blissed out on Xanax, so he really enjoyed the slow-paced stroll around the darkened hood.  Laney needed me to hold her hand for about 20 minutes of trick-or-treating and then proclaimed that she "didn't want to need me anymore" and started going to the door all by herself.  I was all at once sad that she didn't need me, but so proud that she was confident enough to go by herself.  She also told me that her "legs had lots of energy and weren't done walking yet."  That girl trick-or-treated until 8:30pm!  By then most houses were darkened because they had run out of candy.  Seriously, I live on what I call a "15 pound" street.  We handed out nearly all of the 12 or so bags of candy that I bought too.  We returned home and then did the dump-and-sort, one of my favorite childhood memories of Halloween.  Laney raked in an unbelievable amount of candy and the entire family participated in the sugar fest post trick-or-treating.  Laney discovered that she LOVES 3 Musketeers and I was a little bit sad that she didn't get more Snickers bars.  However, I did find out that Milky Way Midnights are really, really good, and I might have a new favorite candy bar too!

Candy madness

Yep, I did pretty good for myself.

Halloween has come and gone, but that feeling you get watching your child revel in the excitement of the night will stay with me forever.  It's almost as good as being a kid in costume on Halloween night.  Almost.