THE SHOHEN'S: Halloween 2012

Yesterday was Halloween. We had such a blast!!! It happened to fall on the 1 day I work, but I kept the day short and rushed right out of there. I hit a major traffic jam coming home (which we normally never have)--grr--but still made it in time for the festivities.
Yesterday at work my wonderful coworkers (Beth, Wendy, Ella Walker, Katherine, and Kathryn) came in to throw me a little "shower". They had gotten a small lunch and had gifts for Emily. It was sweet.
Halloween was so much fun this year. I have to say, we are blessed to live in such a great neighborhood. We have really wonderful neighbors and a nice "community" feel. Daddy had Ashley all dressed and ready to go when I got home from work. We went down to our neighbor Kenia's house, where a bunch of our neighbors had gotten together to have a BBQ together prior to going out. These included Kenia's family, Beth and the girls, the Rinkers (who moved but came back to visit and celebrate), Scott (Leann was working). and 1 or 2 other families that I don't know as well. Our goal was to trick or treat together, but everyone's kids kinda took off in different directions so we got split up.
Ashley had a BLAST Trick or Treating. It was such a fun age--she's old enough to walk and run around, she was so happy and excited to be dressed up and see others in costumes, she is fascinated with pumpkins and Halloween decorations, etc. She wasn't old enough to say Trick or Treat, but she had the "thank you's" down, and knew to reach for candy and put in her bucket. We also know a majority of our neighbors real well, so they loved seeing Ashley all dressed up.
When we came home Ashley decorated her pumpkin. I was disappointed because we had gone to the pumpkin patch a couple weekends ago. The guy working there was saying they had difficulty with their harvest this year, and had to get pumpkins in from somewhere else this time...well they were junky. I had put our pumpkins outside for decoration (uncarved), and they rotted. Luckily the little baby pumpkin was still ok, so we gave that to Ashley to color/decorate. Then after Ashley's bedtime, daddy painted my belly as a pumpkin, so that made up for us not being able to carve our pumpkins this year. It came out SO cute! The paint set didn't have black in it so it was a little faded which was a shame since daddy did such a great job! But so cute.