Crazy for Halloween

We have been crazy for Halloween over here for weeks now. Holidays are turning into a huge party now that Hazel's old enough to remember traditions and get excited about it all.

We kicked things off with a trip to a pumpkin patch. My one goal was to get a great picture of the two kids together, and this is the only one where they both look pretty good. At least there was one...Hazel ran all over the place, enjoying the tractor ride, the little corn maze, the bounce house, the petting zoo, and especially (weirdly) the haunted house. We had to bribe her to get her to sit still for the sibling photo. She wouldn't slow down to look at the camera once after that.

She's pretending to be scared of the haunted house, before going through for her 20th time.

Jack seemed about to cry when I set him down in the straw among the pumpkins. When Hazel was his age, she climbed all over the pumpkins, picking them up, rolling them around. He had no clue what to do besides make me feel guilty for putting me down.

Eventually he warmed up, but it took quite a long time.

We bought our pumpkins at a fourth the price at the grocery store a few days later. It seems like we've carved a pumpkin every night since. That's all Hazel wants to do every night. We got tired of it and talked her into painting one the third night she asked.
We decorated our porch and it is hands-down the biggest hit of the holiday. Hazel opens the door several times a day to gasp, hand on heart, and exclaim that it's "so spooky out here!" She loves to turn on the lights in our jack-o-lanterns each evening as well, and can't stop talking about what the trick-or-treaters will think when they see it. Now, costumes. I finally pinned Hazel down and made her commit to being Rapunzel. She's changed her mind about nine times this month, which was fine until I had to get serious about making costumes. We found a great purple dress-up for her to wear, and planned to festune her hair in all her flower bows, recreating the part in Tangled when the little girls do Rapunzel's hair in the village. I made Jack a ridiculously cute Pascal costume with felt and cotton balls. I'm mighty proud of it.

But then we went trick or treating at a shopping mall last Tuesday, and the friend we invited to come with us was also Rapunzel, but she had this fantastic wig made of yarn, and suddenly, Jack looked well taken care of, and Hazel didn't look like Rapunzel at all, just some generic "princess" or something.
I knew I had to step it up, so I asked permission to copy, and had a fantastic yarn wig myself when we made our appearance at the church trunk-or-treat Saturday night.

Rapunzel and Pascal

Sunday we made our traditional pumpkin soup for dinner, and had friends over to share it with. Lame, no pictures.

And tonight we went trick-or-treating through the complex. Hazel's gathered quite a haul over the past week. Time to hide most of it!