halloweenie goodness.

Yee-hAw!  

Yes, it's finally time. 
After prodding from both of the grandmas, I thought I should go ahead and get these photos posted. 

Oh, before we get started, did you like the title?  "halloweenie goodness"?  hA ha.  A little joke.  I laugh every time I say that.  Never gets old.

I knew that Tillie had a ton of princess dress-ups and that it could be an easy route for a costume this year.  But, for a few reasons, I don't love to FEED the princess obsession.  I am totally happy for her to be a princess in her normal life, but thought we might be able to switch it up for Halloween.
Luckily, her little brother is IN LOVE with Woody from Toy Story.  So, Tillie was Jessie from Toy Story--Not to be confused with her UNCLE JESSE, who is a BOY (he used to get so annoyed when people would say, "What? Your name is Jessie?  That's a girl's name..."  No.  He is definitely a boy. And he spells it like a boy JESSE.  Tillie would talk about it a lot.)

When we were at Target and looking through costumes, I was like, "$30 for one Woody costume?! No way! Why would anyone pay that price for a little kid costume?"  And, then after it took me a lot longer than I'd like to admit to make a pair of chaps and a little cow vest (which, by the way, is LINED and has double red stitching)-----I now know why people fork over the cash for a pre-made costume.
I think our little Cowboy Duo turned out pretty cute, in the end.  Becca even volunteered to do the embroidery on Tillie's little blouse.  Too fun.

These first few were taken two days before Halloween.  We went to a little city's celebration (kind of like Alpine Days for my home-town friends), and if you dressed up in your costumes you could get candy.  Nice.  We dressed up the kiddos.  And, of course, took some photos.  (We forgot Tillie's little sleeve cuffs in these shots.  Notice, this is a 2T blouse and she currently wears 4 & 5T shirts.  Hence, the reason I made cuffs to lengthen it out a bit.  Oh well, you'll see it in a bit...)

fake smile!

Cal hadn't taken a nap this day... so he was kind of a grumpy-sad-face when I wanted him to take photos with his sister.  I love that when I told him, "Cal, don't smile. Please, no smiling!"  he then decided to do a little grin in hiding.

When we told him he could mess with the pumpkins, he perked right up.

This is a CLAAASIC Cal face.  Too bad his eyes are closed, but check out his eyebrows. 

Flashback?  Yes. Same child.  Same eyebrows.  So funny.

 Back to Present Day at the celebration!  Aaron really was in a happy mood today, but it seems all the photos he is glaring.  Weird. 

Eventually, Cal just started putting his candy in Tillie's bag---which she didn't mind ONE bit!

Pretty fun that they made a replica Mater and Luigi from Cars.  Too bad they did weird green and hazel EYES for the cars---I don't know why they didn't just do WHITE?  Weird.  But, the kids didn't seem to mind.  :)

They had a ton of flying kites.  Pretty cool.  Apparently, they even did some hot air balloons later!?!

So, this next part felt a little bit like the show on TLC "Toddlers & Tiaras"---which I SOO do not support.  I've actually never really seen the show, just commercials for it, and it's disgusting to me.  ANYWAY, since they were doing a costume contest, we opted to enter the kids.  Why not?  It was a little crazy how often I kept adjusting the kids costumes while we were in line.  Aaron reminded me of the tv show and I was like, "Oh yeah... I'm not one of THOSE moms..."  Oops. 

Anyway, they had to go up on stage and hold their little numbers up.  Tillie did great!  Even waved to the crowd!  Cal looked like he was going to cry or yell.
In the end, they didn't win.  Oh well, we wouldn't want one of those lame medals anyway. 

::: Next up, Aaron and I dressed up.  I know.  Shocker.  I'm not really into the whole costume thing, but alas, Aaron had a work party and they told him, "You'll feel lame if you're NOT dressed up, b/c everyone goes all out."  So, alas, we were pirates.
People kept commenting that they liked my gypsy costume.  Whoops.  Oh well.  I care about this  (---) much.
Here we are posing it up while Becca took our pictures.
Best part of the night: watching Aaron act like he had long hair.  He kept messing with his scarf and flipping it over his shoulder.  It made me chuckle every time.

::: Next up, Halloween DAY.  We'd been in countdown mode for SO long that Tillie was in disbelief when I told her today was Halloween for REAL.  They were super pumped to see the little table cloth out for breakfast that Nana sent.  Cal is especially excited.  

Later in the day we went to a little playgroup.  They did fake trick or treating in the house with different doors.  It was pretty cute.

Okay, wow.  We're getting there.  Remember how many photos I took?  And remember how many photos I decided to post?  SHEESH.  Last round.  Ready to REALLY Trick or Treat.  Cal was MUCH happier for this round.  Can you tell?

Love this next face of Tillie's especially.  Aaron took this on our point and shoot at the same time I was taking shots on our big camera.  So funny.  (yes, it was like we had two shooters for a wedding or something.  Apparently Halloween is a big deal around here for us.)

  Tillie is such a little "care taker" for Calvin.  It is so funny.  Here she is adjusting something.

Here she is fetching him his bag...

This pose of Tillie makes her look like her little cloth Jessie doll.

Our neighbors are pretty sweet.  Here they are helping the kids figure out where to go to get CANDY!

 

Tillie kept getting stressed that a "scary witch" would open the door.  She saw one at the city festival a few days earlier and it kind of wigged her out.  She was pretty tentative at each door b/c of this.

Cal, on the other hand, would run up to each door and just say, "Treat!"  

p.s. check out that horrible creature in the bottom right of this pic.  Honestly, Halloween stuff like this makes me sick!  I hate this kind of craziness!

In the end, it was a success, I'd say.  "Thumbs up!" says Tillie.

Hope you had a Happy Halloween yourself!

THE END!