Halloween Day!

Our day started out with pumpkin-shaped banana pancakes. Why not pumpkin pancakes, you ask? First of all, I didn't think of it; second of all, that sounds kinda complicated; third of all, I woke up with the Jack Johnson song "Banana Pancakes" in my head. So there ya go. Anyway, they were really good, and I'm not sure if regular pancakes will ever satisfy me again. (I can't take the credit, though--the recipe was on allrecipes.com. Click here if you wanna try it, but only use 1 banana instead of 2 to avoid excessive mushiness.)

Between that and the evening festivities, we were just kinda lazy all day. We had dinner at Dave's parents' house (sloppy joes with American cheese slices cut into pumpkin shapes--so cute!), and then headed to the trunk-or-treat in the church parking lot. Gracie's third and final Halloween 2008 costume was a spider, and she was so cute! [My sister gave me a bunch of the costumes her kids have outgrown, plus I got the spider one for free at a garage sale, so we had 3 costumes that fit Gracie this year, and it seemed a shame to not use them all! See the subsequent posts for the other costumes!]

Daddy affectionately nicknamed her "Itsy Bitsy" for the evening.

There were booths set up before the trick-or-treating started, so we tried a few of them. Gracie liked the fishing booth, where she "caught" a pencil,

and then we headed over to the "eat-a-donut-off-a-string" booth that Dave's dad was running. She saw no problem with using her hands, though, and even shared with me! What a sweetheart!

When that was over, I took Gracie to get candy while Dave handed out candy. Gracie was really good about saying "treat-a-treat" and then thanking people for the candy they gave her. :)

Next we headed to the great-grandparents' houses, because they wanted to see Gracie all dressed up. They, of course, thought she looked adorable and gave her all kinds of attention. She even got a Halloween book (as well as candy) from Grammy and Gramps!

Then we went home, put Gracie to bed (although the sugar in her blood kept her up and talking in her crib a little longer than usual), and had Dave's family over to watch "Ghostbusters." They brought Halloween cookies and cupcakes to share, and they were so yummy! We had definitely gotten our daily (weekly?) allowance of sugar by the end of the day, but it was so worth it! What a fun holiday!