Rah! Rah!! Rah!!!

I guess we've found another one of Missouri's passions. Besides baseball, Nascar, and beer they are totally into Halloween. I had no idea.
We drove to the subdivision next to ours, one that is more kid friendly, to do our trick or treating with Avery. When we told Avery we were going trick or treating she couldn't get out to the car fast enough. She was so excited!!

We were pretty amazed at what we found when we parked the car. There were a few houses that had big bonfires going on out in front. A lot of garage doors were open and people had tables set up that were loaded down with hot chocolate, hot dogs, pop, etc. A lot of the neighbors would get together in one garage and have several bowls of candy lined up. They would have you take candy from each bowl and then would try to have you take a hot dog along for the road. Avery got lots of candy, goody bags that had several candies in each of them, bags of popcorn, a full-sized snickers, a hostess ho-ho and hostess cupcake, and a fairly big plush ghost that is holding a pumpkin. Somebody actually gave that to her as a "trick-or-treat."

Avery was so cute at each house. She would hold out her pumpkin and say, "Treat!!" (she conveniently left off the 'trick' part). They would toss in a few candy bars and then Avery would call out, "Thank you!!" So cute! Lots of the people would ask Avery to cheer and she would reply with "rah! rah! rah!"

Most of the houses were decked out with Halloween lights and big pumpkins. One of the houses had a life-sized Freddy Krueger doll waiting for you at the front door. Freddy's eyes would move and he would start talking to you as you approached. Avery just grinned ear to ear when she saw Freddy. The people in the house couldn't believe that she wasn't scared, and was in fact smiling. They got quite a kick out of it.

I don't want to brag, but Avery was pretty popular out there. Have you ever seen a cuter cheerleader??

The Whole Nine Yards...

Well, here we are decked out in our Halloween finery. We've had Avery's costume for months but weren't sure what Al and I were going to do for the big event.

One night I was talking with Sarah and she suggested making it a theme. I went with her advice and dressed as a football player with Al as the couch. Avery is really great at boosting our team spirit :)

Trunk or Treat

Last night was our ward Trunk or Treat. This was Avery's first experience with trick or treating so we were interested to see how she would handle it.

She loved it!

We only stayed for about an hour but Avery had a blast and loved seeing all the other kids dressed up.

Little Songbird

In the past week or so Avery has started to sing songs. It is really cute. At first it took me a while to catch on because most of the words aren't that clear, but when I figured out what she was doing I made her repeat it over and over again.
Avery sings, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," "Row Row Row Your Boat," and the "Clean Up" song from nursery. She doesn't sing "Yankee Doodle" yet, but makes requests for it by exclaiming, "Doodle!!"

Some other fun things Avery has learned:

She knows her letter "A" and likes to point it out on things.

She knows the colors pink and yellow.

Avery likes to chew gum. She found some in the car the other day and helped herself to it. She will chew it for a very long time and doesn't swallow it. I'm not sure where she learned this from.

Al has been working the nights and sleeps during the day. The first day Al came home and was sleeping I had to sneak into the bedroom to get dressed. I thought that Avery would stay in the other room playing, but she barged in a few seconds later. I whispered, "Daddy is night-night. He's sleeping." Avery looked at me with serious eyes and put her finger to her lips and said, "Shhh!" It was hard not to laugh.

We have a pop-up Halloween book that I was given several years ago. It is aimed at older kids and is a little on the spooky side. Avery loves to get this book out and have you move all of the things that move or pop out. She gets really excited and giggles or puts her hands on her cheeks and makes a big "O" with her mouth. But there is this one part that absolutely terrifies her and she will burst into tears and run away. I told her that we had to put the book away because it was too scary. A few minutes later she brought me the book again and was begging to read it. I gave in. Once again she loved it until we got to that one part. She ran off crying again. The funny thing is that she keeps bringing me the book, several times a day, even though it creeps her out.

The Pumpkin Patch

Twins!

Today Avery's best friend Em came over to play. We were tickled when we saw that the girls we dressed almost identically--we had to get a picture.

I wish I could get one where they were both smiling, but that seemed impossble. Anyway, they are still cute!

Halloween barette and shirt

I bought Avery this Halloween shirt and barette quite a while ago. Avery likes the pumpkin on the shirt, but really gets excited about the bat barette. Every day since I've bought it Avery has brought it to me at least once a day asking to have it put in her hair. I have even caught her on several occasions trying to put the bat barette in her hair herself. I've explained that we can't wear it until it cools off outside.

Today it was finally cool enough to wear long sleeves. I told Avery that she would get to wear her pumpkin shirt and wear the bat barette and boy was she excited. She was practically bouncing off the bed while I was trying to put the barette in. When I was finished I told her that she had the bat in her hair. At first she looked really pleased. Then she looked puzzled and reached up to touch the barette. I watched as she tried to pull it out of her hair. I think she had decided that it was more fun to play with the bat barette than to wear it. I explained to her that she would have to keep it in her hair. She thought about this for a second and then her bottom lip stuck out about as far as I've seen it go. I wondered how long the bat barette would last.

Avery actually left it in the whole day. Every once in a while she would reach up and touch it, I guess to make sure it was still there.