Halloween

Yesterday we had a Halloween extravaganza. First was Ryan's company's party. Genworth is really family-friendly down here in NC, and they do all kinds of fun kids parties. At this event hey had Goodberry's (local ice cream) and each department entered a pumpkin into a contest that the kids voted on (Ryan tried to swing Oliver's vote but he cast his ballot for Inside Sales, not HR!), and then there was trick-or-treating. Oliver was pretty overwhelmed by all the people and was quite shy. He was much more interested in pushing his Thomas train than meeting Ryan's colleagues and their kiddos!

Then we headed back to our neighborhood for a party hosted by my friend Autumn. They had lots of yummy treats and a cool "haunted fort" for the kids to play in (basically a huge cardboard box with doors and windows cut out of it and decorated for Halloween). Then we had to rush back to our house for trick-or-treating.

Oliver was a little skeptical about this whole trick or treating thing at first. His buddy Ian (Tigger in these pictures) came over to trick or treat with us. Ian is a year older than Ollie so can actually say (when prompted) "trick or treat," Oliver on the other hand can only say "tee tee" which is his word for "thank you." But what Oliver CAN do, and did with relish, is knock on doors (so cute, he basically hits the door with the back of his hand), grab handfuls of candy from a bowl and drop them one by one into the plastic pumpkin, and then run to the next house.

The boys got waylaid at one point because we passed a construction zone and there was a bobcat moving gravel from one pile to another. It was getting dark so the bobcat had it's lights on (and was zooming around alarmingly fast!!) Both Oliver and Ian were transfixed...that was probably the highlight of the night for them! They also were somewhat distracted by the ever-delightful game of dropping small rocks through the holes in man-hole covers.

Ryan and I carved pumpkins on Tuesday night. Mine is the somewhat generic lopsided smile, Ryan's is...San Gimignano, Italy! Notice the medieval towers! (We just got back from Italy on Sunday so we both still have Italy on the brain...I'll post pictures, etc, soon.) Oliver also decorated a baby pumpkin with markers, but I'm not sure you can see his masterpiece in this picture.