3 Years, 1 Month, 2 Weeks, and 2 Days

Ruby & Charlotte are 3 years, 1 month, 2 weeks, and 2 days old today. We celebrated Halloween with a class party and then trick-or-treating yesterday afternoon (out here, trick-or-treating starts at 3pm). This year, Ruby picked out a blue monster and Charlotte chose a green dragon for their costumes about 3 weeks ago. But when it came time to actually dress up, they happily switched. Enjoy the photos!

In their costumes for Halloween 2011:

Roaring like a monster and dragon do:

We went trick-or-treating with Ava (an astronaut) & Jacob (a cow) in their neighborhood, since ours is always deserted:

They set off excited to be trick-or-treating, following Ava's lead (but were only interested for the first block, then were more intrigued by trying to take rocks & sticks from people's yards and asking when we were getting to the park):

At the first house, Ruby stood and watched from afar when it came time to go up to the door:

Once she saw that they were getting candy, she moved a bit closer:

In the end, Grandpa Jay had to get the candy and drop it in her pumpkin bucket:

But by the 4th house, Ruby was up on the porch waiting with Charlotte & Ava:

Charlotte paused often to sort through fallen leaves, pebbles, and dried pine needles:

Once we got home, they dumped out their rewards for going trick-or-treating (which also included a few leaves, a rock, and a small stick they snuck in with all the candy):

Since we are new to this going to school thing, I was unaware that you (the parent) are supposed to make favor bags for class parties, so I scrambled and came up with an idea that only took about 2 1/2 hours of my time with Bob's help:

Marshmallow ghost bags, laminated bat name tags (I now want to laminate everything, that machine is so great), and wooden pinwheels in Halloween colors. Ruby and Charlotte wanted their ghost bags to be scary, but we did the rest with happy faces:

At the party, one of the activities was to paint and decorate little pumpkins with Bob's help, which they both did not want to stop:

After class each Saturday, they love to go and wander along the Fox River:

Mainly so they can throw sticks in and watch them float away:

This is the first year that they tried candy, and we gave them lollipops to start with. They were interested in them for the first few licks, but then decided that the pinwheels and pencils they got were better: