Halloween in Arizona

Halloween in Arizona is amazing! Gorgeous weather (in the 80s) makes for easy, practically no-clean-up pumpkin carving and worry-free costumes. No need to add multiple layers underneath costumes to protect from the cold! We had a great Halloween and enjoyed several celebrations.

We started off with Trunk-or-Treating at our church. It was the biggest Trunk-or-Treat I've ever been to! Two rows of parked cars (up and down each row). And, with three kids, we ended up with way too much candy to start our celebration.

To make sure our pumpkins didn't spoil in the Arizona heat, we didn't carve them until the day before. Carving pumpkins this year was more enjoyable than it has been in a long time. I think the gorgeous weather, minimal clean-up, and simple pumpkin faces (NO PATTERNS!) made the experience much more pleasant than I was anticipating.

The kids really enjoyed gutting their pumpkins this year. No squirming or begging us to do it for them. They actually really gutted and even attempted to scrape and clean out their pumpkins all by themselves.

Instead of spending way to much time transferring a pattern onto pumpkins this year, we opted for simple pumpkin faces. I had a great idea to cut out small papers of different eyes, noses, and mouths so the kids could mix them around and choose their favorite face. It worked great! We even let Tyler use the carving tools and carve quite a bit of his own pumpkin this year. The kids had a great time!

Amyah, as expected, ran around the entire time causing problems and stealing pumpkin lids and carving tools! She enjoyed being part of the activity.










On Halloween morning, Kevin's office held a Trick-or-Treating event for kids. I knew Tyler would be upset if I just took the girls, so we kept him out of school for the morning (his party wasn't until the last hour of the day and he couldn't put his costume on until the party so we figured he wasn't missing any festivities in his classroom) and headed over to Kevin's office. By the time we finished there, we had way too much candy. We actually decided to hand out all the candy we already collected to the Trick-or-Treaters that night. I know that's terrible, but I didn't want any more candy!
The excited trick-or-treaters.
A cool vampire. It took a lot of convincing to do this to Tyler's hair. He was mad when I did it the first time for the Trunk-or-Treat. But, all night he received complements for his cool hair, so he was happy to do it again for Halloween night. This is a repeat costume from last year, with some small changes. Last year he was a traditional vampire with a white shirt, black pants, red cumber bum, and slicked back black hair. This year he wore all black and cool hair. Aunt Alyssa made the vampire cape last year. We couldn't bear to let it be forgotten after only one year!
Our adorable Tinker Bell. Made brand new this year with much intracacy by Aunt Alyssa! The costume was beautiful and Susie looked amazing! :)
Our little ballerina. Another Kindergarten mom gave Amyah this tutu to wear. She also gave us a smaller Tinker Bell costume. With three choices of costumes, Amyah showed an obvious attachment to the tutu. She loved it!
Another costume choice... a pirate princess (Susie's costume when she was the same age). We added the Jack Sparrow bandanna and hair and couldn't stop laughing!
I took the older kids Trick-or-Treating and left Amyah with Kevin eating Smarties and candy corn. We already had way too much candy, and she had already celebrated at the church and at Kevin's work. Just as we were heading out of our house, one of Tyler's classmates was heading up our drive-way. We invited ourselves to join her and her mom as they Trick-or-Treated around our neighborhood. She was all by herself, so I'm assuming we made her celebration a bit more fun. Adding her into the mix of our kids definitely added to their Halloween enjoyment. It was a lot of fun going around our neighborhood. Many people were actually sitting on their porches passing out candy or even having dinner parties on their driveways or block parties in their cul-de-sacs. The warm night air was also a bonus! It felt like a really fun celebration everywhere!

The loot! So much candy I think we will be eating it at least through the end of the year. Kevin didn't get rid of all the candy from earlier, so we ended up with an overflowing giant-sized bowl.

Happy Halloween!