Once Tyler saw this armor kit, his mind was fixed. He made a good knight!

Mark - Superman

Andrew - The Awkward Avoidance Viking

Adam - A Boxer

Amy - Arwen

Natalie - Lady Galadriel

I remember buying these for Adam’s 2nd Halloween, knowing they would double as pajamas. I didn’t imagine that a total of four boys would get to use them!

Andrew makes a great Awkward Avoidance Viking, and it sure is an easy costume!

Adam settled for being a boxer, since we didn’t have time to make him another Bumblebee Transformer costume that actually transforms. Well hey, his great-grandpa Barney was a boxer, so it’s a little authentic. Several kids at school asked if he really had a black eye.

Natalie made a great Galadriel! She didn’t trick-or-treat this year, but wore her costume to school.

Our favorite Middleton pumpkin this year was Messi!

It was a great night!

Tyler - A Knight

These two make quite the daytime duo!

(elf princess from Lord of the Rings)

(elf queen from Lord of the Rings)

It was Natalie’s idea to be an elf from Lord of the Rings. Amy hopped on the idea as well, so we had two elf princesses.

Amy even wore Arwen’s necklace.

Jen - a Witch

This is the only picture I have of myself as a witch this year. I only dressed up for our Primary Halloween party, the Wednesday before Halloween. It was fun (again) for people to not recognize me with black hair. What a hoot! My green eye shadow looked awesome up close!

Jon - Zombie Master

Here’s one of our crazy group shots. The Halloween party turned out awesome thanks to the youth and their leaders. Each class put on a Halloween activity station: Beehives-cupcake walk, Mia Maids-bean bag toss, Laurels-cookie decorating, Deacons-zombie shootout, Teachers-fishing pond and donut bobbing, and Priests-crazy alley.

Jon makes everything fun. The deacons decided to do a “zombie shootout” for our Primary Halloween party. The kids piled into our trailer on bales of hay, which Jon pulled with our Ranger. He drove them to the upper parking lot, and once the spotlight (from the church) shined on the zombies, the kids shot them all with Nerf bullets, and then drove back. The kids loved it, and it was the prefect activity for the deacons. Thankfully, the weather was super nice.

Halloween

Halloween night was the best weather we’ve ever had for trick-or-treating! It was so warm! We visited every house in the Upper U, and then went back for our Ranger. Jon drove us around in that, and it was super fun.

Dean and Makenzie joined us, and so did their parents. So we just enjoyed socializing and getting to hit all of our favorite destinations without freezing fingers and toes or crying kids. It was so awesome! We even discovered a new favorite house in our ward that serves homemade root beer! (It’s a hidden house, making it that much cooler!)

We finished the night watching “How to Train Your Dragon 2” for the first time.

The week of Halloween was so crazy! Having just returned from a trip to Florida with Jon, we had the Primary program in sacrament meeting in which Adam and Amy each had instrument solos, and I opened (my first as pres.), I helped with sharing time, had a family over for dinner, and had a big Primary-RS Christmas Party Committee meeting that night (Primary is in charge of the ward Christmas party this year). Tuesday was pack meeting, Wednesday was our Primary Halloween Party, Thursday was visiting teaching and a stake leadership meeting, and Friday was Halloween with all its festivities (including cello group class for Adam). Saturday, we did a huge leaf raking session at Springdell, enjoyed a game night with the Hills (who moved out of our ward this year), and of course, Sunday, I got to teach Sharing Time again! Things haven’t really slowed down much, but I’m grateful that it has almost all been good stuff.