*Every* night Emily thanks God for Halloween in her prayers. Still.

Happy Halloween! Emily loved looking at the Halloween decorations in the stores all through September and October, and then the week of Halloween began. All month she had been changing her mind about what costume to wear, until she finally said "I just want to be me. Just Emily." She ended up choosing her favorite costume from her dress-up, Cinderella, for preschool and the church carnival, then mid-week switched to 'Shiny Taranadon' (pteradactyl from the PBS cartoon Dinosaur Train) for Music Makers and the church trunk-or-treat. We decided to visit great-grandma for Halloween night since it was on the Sabbath this year, and Emily was a super helper to pass out the candy, a responsibility she took very seriously :)

Church Halloween Carnival

 

 

Pumpkin Carving! She thought the insides looked like cheese (??)

 Church Trunk-or-Treat

ta-da!

I turned around and Emily had come up with this trick all by herself!

bathing beauties

Emily LOVES taking baths! Give her a few bath toys and she'll play to her heart's content. I crack up when I can hear her chattering away and more often than not the floor gets flooded...

Mallory joined Emily in the bubble bath after a particularly messy lunch!

facebook leads to blog neglect...

I know, I know! It's been forever since my last post and even longer since pictures of Emily. Facebook made me do it. I was lured in by the status updates and friend requests :)

I've got a katrillion pictures to edit and file, so as I accomplish that I will do my best to blog my fave's.

Since these are already online and look fabulous... here are some of the portraits from our recent session with my cousin and amazing photographer Karen of Shine Photography. My sisters and I traveled to Utah for mom's graduation ceremonies at BYU (yay mom!) and gave her a photo session with us and the grandkids. You can see more of the sneak preview of the portraits at Karen's blog. I especially love Kristin's portrait!

time to play!

The dishes fairy strikes again!

It's that time of year... for a light jacket and jeans.

Emily loves to read her books! I'm so proud :)

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa (Larry and Marlene) for the play food set! It's their favorite thing to play with- even Mallory!

Mallory is growing up so fast! She's already climbing onto tables like a little mountain goat.

the latest of miss emily

mily and I joined the fabulous Shawna K at Balboa Park to help photograph her adorable twin girls. She also snapped some great ones of Emily! My favorite is this black and white, which is now my computer desktop background and will soon be hanging on my wall :)

trick-or-treat!

After our first pumpkin liquified on the kitchen table 3 days before Halloween (we didn't even have a chance to carve it!), we tried again with this one. Emily was very excited to be able to use her butter knives. The ice cream scoop is now her favorite utensil.
Our little helper!

Of course we had to stop by Great-Grandma's to trick-or-treat and show off Emily's costume. Grandma found those awesome pumpkin lanterns to help the kids see while trick-or-treating in the dark, and made a cute bag for Emily's treats!

We hung out with friends at their annual Halloween bash.

Trick-or-treating en masse is the way to go!

Noah the frog decided to take a rest, so Princess Emily plopped down next to him :) The loot!

All the kids decorated glasses for the 3-D movie being projected on a sheet in the backyard.

And a party just isn't a party without a piñata! Although hanging a witch from a tree and beating it with a stick was a little "Salem witch trials"...

The kiddos lined up (according to height) to take a whack

Emily got four good hits in

Daddy was proud and helped her gather up some goodies.

Too much fun!

Happy Halloween!