Here's the truth: I am a "Halloween Scrooge." (John's words, but true enough.) I have a bad attitude about Halloween. I don't understand why during one month a year we all have to pretend we like gross, creepy things. During one workout this last month everyone was so delighted that a dead lift + a fly = a dead fly. *eye roll* Why would anyone like a dead fly? Flies are gross when they're alive and grosser when they're dead. Nasty.
That being said, I really thought we did Halloween 'right' this year. We went to a super fun Halloween party at the botanical gardens. One of the main things that made it great was that there was no creepy or scary things. We started out the evening with a picnic in the stake center parking lot with a Costco Pizza and veggies. My mom was in town visiting so she got us the pizza. :)
Check out the cute hand/face painting.
There was a great dance party in one of the pavilions. They gave out tons of glow sticks, had fog machines, and had toys and balls to play/dance with. It was awesome!
We met Elsa and Belle on the way.
One of the best parts was the circus activities. In addition to having some cool circus performers throughout the garden, there was a section for people to try out different circus equipment. We loved the tightrope walk, stilts, plate spinning, and balancing on a rolling board.
We loved the unicorn encounter. Look at those tiny ponies!
Holland wanted to feed it her pumpkin. :)
I know this is redundant, but they were so little! My girls aren't very tall, and these ponies were dwarfed by them.
We went around the pumpkin walk which had pumpkins in fun poses throughout. These ones are playing. We saw some farming, jumping off a diving board, shoeing a horse, and lots more.
Some other great things about this evening was that each girl got to pick out a pumpkin to take home. Miriam and Holland picked tiny ones, but Eliza picked a huge one for carving. There were also discovery tables around to learn about crazy botany things. There were crafts to make ghosts, mummies, and spiders from fruit.
On Halloween itself, we used the fun decorations Grandma brought us to make fun headbands for school.
That night there was a no more trick or treating (because we had so, so much candy from the trunk or treat. But we made eye-ball berry ice cream. It was delicious.
And we played a rousing game of "Don't Eat Pete." We haven't played that with the kids for a long time--it was a hit!
