We had such a fun and busy last week of October! We started our week off by carving our pumpkins. It was funny to see both girls' grossed out faces about the guts though after the initial reaction they both had fun cleaning out their pumpkins. I carved Baylor's into a kitty face and Paige designed hers on paper and then drew it on the pumpkin. It was a little hard for her to cut through the pumpkin so Nate stepped in and helped her out. They both turned out so cute!
All lit up along with Nona's pumpkin.
Then the day before Halloween we had our ward trunk or treat. It was amazing! They had a Harry Potter theme and the nerd side of me loved every minute of it. There was a lot of preparation for it that I helped out with which was stressful but a lot of fun. Since it was an early release day, Hadlie (Paige's friend from church) came over and played with Paige until it was time to go to the ward party. All three girls dressed up as the most cute princesses ever!
Elsa and Anna
A very cute little princess in training
For the ward party the young women were in charge of the wand shop- Ollivander's. I volunteered to take charge since I am a Harry Potter nerd and love the party planning/decorating part of ward parties. Last Saturday some of the young women came over to my house and helped paint about 100 wands. They were all slightly different and I loved the sparkly metallic colored paints. I also prepared all the decorations for our wand shop and loved all the little details of Harry Potter that I got to add in.
The gym was decorated as the great hall with each table decorated for each house in the Harry Potter series. They had butter beer and it was a potluck. There were also sorting hat cupcakes that had different colored frosting in the middle to sort you into your house. There was at least 200 people there. So it was crowded, busy, and so much fun! We all ate dinner and then there was three different rooms that you could go to. The wand shop, the other side of the gym for games, and the picture room.
For the wand shop the young women ran it while I controlled traffic and told everyone where to go. They went up to the table and received their wand. The girls had fun with it and had different options to see what wand fit the young wizard. Then they got to practice two spells with their new wands. The first was lumos/nox. Lumos is turning the light on and nox is turning it off. So I got a remote controlled candle and one of the young women would secretly push the button to turn the candle on and off as the kid did the spell. The other spell was wingardium leviosa which is the levitating spell. I had a feather tied to fishing line and a young women would secretly pull the string down which would lift the feather up. The lights were dim so it was perfect since you couldn't see the string at all. I loved seeing the magic and believing in the kids and their excitement of doing magic. Then as they left they each got a paper filled with spells and how to do them so they can practice at home.
There were so many fun games that were Harry Potter themed in the gym. Anna put these together and did an amazing job. There was corn hole to free Dobby (you threw socks into the hole), pin the scar on Harry Potter, Quidditch ring toss, get the owls into the owl barn (white balloons with owl faces that you had to get into a cage with wands), and there was another one with glow sticks. I never went in there during the night since I was in the wand shop but I heard it was a lot of fun.
Then the cute photo area. I should have taken a picture sometime during the night since I was dressed up like Hermonie but I was too busy but you get to see this cute picture of Baylor refusing to look at the camera. :)
Then it was trunk or treat time. The kids had fun going around and around until the candy was gone. I had fun passing out our candy and giving handfuls of candy out since we had a huge pot of candy.
Then it was Halloween! We had dinner at our house before setting out for trick or treating.
I loved watching Baylor's excitement for it all this year. She was walking right along with the group and excited to go to each house. Then it turned into Nate carrying her from house to house to keep up with the older kids but she still loved it all and loved getting candy at each house. She even said thank you a few times and waved some. It was just so cute! And Paige was all about it too like she always is and could have kept going for probably another hour but we called it quits a little after 8 so we could get some sleep since there was school the next day.
We have SO much candy at our house now!
Happy Halloween!
