Harper's Favorite Holiday

Harper has loved Halloween for as long as I can remember. In looking back over my blog, I found this post about where it all started for her. It's funny how the tiniest little bug that you can barely see scares her terribly, but not Halloween. Not the ghosts or goblins or scary decorations. You can ask her any day of the year what her favorite holiday is, and it never changes.

This year we were themed from the movie Brave. Harper was Merida, Chris was the Scottish red-headed dad, I was the mom/queen turned into a bear, Foster was one of the baby boys turned into a bear, and Kinley was a wisp. (If you haven't seen the movie, this was the little blue light that Merida follows into the woods.) I was super excited about making Kinley's costume, and I have to admit I thought it was pretty clever...until I realized that no one would understand what she was unless we told them, thus they would probably assume she was just Elsa in a poorly made costume... But we knew what she was. And no matter what people thought she was, she was undeniably adorable!

Yesterday started with the girls' class parties at school. (Actually, it started with chaos trying to get everyone in costume, but we won't go into that...) The whole school does a Halloween parade on the field so everyone can show off their costumes. Then the kids move inside and have spooky snacks and games.

The just LOVE going to school together!

Mama bear and baby bear

Dad made it to the party

Harper and her teacher. She LOVES her teacher! And so do we!

My beautiful wisp

Her freckles melt my heart...

 After the school parties, we went home and rested for a bit. I made some brownies for Nanny, and we headed to the nursing home. They have a really pretty courtyard that we take Nanny to when we go so she can get some fresh air. We ate brownies and cupcakes out there and sang Happy Birthday to her. (Harper also thinks it's pretty cool that Nanny's birthday is on Halloween) She turned 87 yesterday!

After that we went downtown, met up with my mom, and walked over to Mt. Vernon...the best trick-or-treating spot in Prescott. (Which also makes it the most crowded) So we started at 4:30 with a bunch of our friends and beat most of the rush.

By the time we left, the kids were getting "tired and hungry and thirsty" as Kinley put it. And frankly, so were the rest of us. But we couldn't finish the holiday without our annual Halloween dinner at Denny's. I honestly don't know why it's Denny's...Chris and I were talking about that last night. It just happened to sound good one year I guess. Now we all look forward to the tradition. Yesterday I mentioned it in a post on Instagram, and the comment section became a forum for our friends to figure out who was going this year. We went, we ate, we laughed, the kids played, the food took forever, and it was awesome. Another great Halloween for the books.


Some more, older Halloween fun: Halloween 2011 and Halloween 2010 and Halloween 2009