Happy happy Halloween... and some other pics

Happy November everyone! Is it just me, or was October a really long month?! It seemed to last and last. At the same time, now that it's over, I'm wondering, how in the WORLD did it get to be NOVEMBER already?!?

Well. Anyway. We've had an October here, long and short at the same time. And here are some pics of our time...

Natalie, darling dear. Look at that hair. It's so cute, cute, cute. And curly, curly, curly. And red, red, red. Just had to put up a couple pics of our cutie...

Next up, Spencer's Joy School Halloween Party. Samantha was sick with a sniffle (bad enough to be home, but not bad enough to miss something fun, ya know?) So, she got to join in the party, parading around with the four Joy School boys, and eating cookies they decorated themselves...

Anybody hear the East Coast weather reports from this last weekend? This was what our back yard looked like last Saturday...

SNOW!!! Big, fluffy, wet, heavy flakes. It was absolutely GORGEOUS! And also one of the worst storms for our area in a LONG time, for all the damage it did! It was worse that Hurricane Irene, by a long ways. There are still people without power (five days later). Lots of towns cancelled Halloween, or postponed trick-or-treating until this coming weekend. What made it so bad is that the snow was soooo wet and heavy, and all the trees still have their leaves. So, the trees "caught" all that snow on their leaves, and huge branches were breaking off EVERYWHERE, crashing across roads, ripping power lines down, etc.

Luckily, we didn't have it too bad. We never lost power, and the worst real damage we saw was a big tree that fell across our road, a few blocks down the street. Unfortunately, we had to cancel our church's big Halloween party for Saturday night. That was a let-down. We were on the planning committee, and let me tell you, it was going to be AWESOME! We had everything all decorated and set for a chili cook-off, a kids' carnival, and a trunk-or-treat... all set up with a monster theme, etc. And then... the snow. My good friend was in charge, and had been planning it for a month. So, it was quite the disappointment.

To make things better, we decided to have an impromptu chili/halloween party at our house instead...

Did I mention Brian's parents are in town? Here are the kids with Grandpa and Grandma, waiting for our party guests to arrive.

And here are most of the kids lined up, in their costumes...

We had two other little "monsters" but I'm not sure where they were for the photo shoot??

We just had two other families over (I don't think our little front room would accommodate much more). We ate chili together and let the kids play some games. Musical chairs was a bit of a fiasco, maybe I'll upload the video I took, if I can get it to work (which I usually can't!) It worked better when we just let them play "run-around-the-chair-like-crazies" to some Halloween music. Then we let the kids "trick-or-treat" upstairs, with all the grown-ups standing behind bedroom doors, or in the bathroom, or hall closet, handing out candy. Kinda fun. Here's Brian, dressed as a crazed BSU fan. He even let me paint "BSU" on his cheek.

On the REAL Halloween night, we got together again to take the kids trick-or-treating. Fun times!

Couldn't resist taking a picture of cute Clara... she was dressed up as a skunk! So stinkin' cute! ;)

So, our group went up and down one really nice long street, with lots of houses giving out lots of fun treats. Sammie led the pack, and Spencer brought up the rear. And yes, that's SNOW. Burrrrrr!

Brian and Natalie missed the "group" trick-or-treating party. So we did a little more afterward, to our nearby neighbors. And we got Natalie all dolled up, for posterity's sake, even though she didn't really have a clue what it was all about. She sure looked cute!! Aunt Melissa made her clown costume, isn't it so darling?

 One last photo shoot, before they unloaded their loot, took off their costumes, and headed to bed...

In case it wasn't obvious, Samantha was a bee. (She actually went around saying "bzzzzz! I stung you!!" after she picked her candy out of people's trick-or-treat baskets.) And Natalie was a clown. (It took A LOT to get that red paint on her nose, just in case you wondered.)

 Spencer was a dragon, and I bribed him to smile and wear his "hat" in this picture before he could have some Halloween candy. hee hee...

I'm sure I have more to write. But this was my Halloween post. So... ta da! It was a fun night/weekend. Now what to do with all this candy!??!