Happy Halloween

Tonight we hosted our 2nd Annual Halloween Party. For the past two years we have invited ISE families to join us for trick-or-treating in our neighborhood and then over to our house for goodies. Halloween in the UK is not near as big in the United States so there isn't a lot of trick-or-treating, but its growing. Our neighborhood fortunately is very family friendly and does the closest thing to "American" style trick-or-treating. We got lots of the kids in our neighborhood pretty excited this year because we decorated our house for Halloween on October 1st.  Our other American friends in the village, the Dobberfuhl's, often would have crowds of people stop in front of their house and stare at their decor.  We are starting a trend though because there were lots more decorations and pumpkins on our neighbors' houses out this year compared to last year.
This year we had over 20 kids join in the fun (last year we had 8)!!!  Because we were going to have such a large group, I sent a little note to all of my neighbors to warn them we'd be coming around.  One of them wrote me back and saidshe loved seeing all of us last year and felt like she was in the movie ET with all the kids running around is such cute costumes.  They knew we had to be the Americans because of the quality of our costumes.  Most costumes in the UK are skeletons, witches, devils or pumpkins.  As you can see we've got princesses, bunnies, dinosaurs, Batman, cockroaches, Tigger's and Addie.  

Even more crazy...this year I had 55 people in my tiny English home all at once. It was a good thing that we were all such close friends because we packed in the place pretty tightly. We had so much fun and I think the kids really enjoyed themselves.

Harrison dressed up as Tigger this year and we attempted get Addison to be Dora the Explorer. The giraffe costume that I borrowed for her didn't fit so last minute I put together a little brown wig, an explorer belt with Dora's friend Map and a mini Dora, and borrowed a back pack from Emily to carry Dora's other friend Boots the monkey. Of course she didn't want anything to do with it because once all the kids started showing up she wanted to play. I ended up pinning the little Dora wig on to her stocking cap so she really ended up looking like a little Jamaican girl rather than Dora.  It was so fun bringing her around to trick-or-treat this year because she attempted to say something like "trick-or-treat" but she could say "thank you" to everyone.  Also now that we know most of the people in our neighborhood it was great to see them all and their kids stop by our house.

It was so fun to have mom and dad there to be with the kids on Halloween, because mostly in the States they wouldn't have come all the way to our house in Illinois to go trick-or-treating with the kids. It was also great to have all of our closest friends from over here all in one place so my mom and dad could meet them and put faces with names.  Our wonderful babysitter even left her candy handing out duties to join the party and brought us some well decorated "fairy cakes."  Doesn't she look so cute?  Can't wait to see what next year will be like.