Trick-or-Treat!!

How lucky were we this year to have Halloween fall on a Saturday?! Gosh, I wish this happened every year but obviously that can't be the case! This year in addition to trick-or-treating at night with our best buds. Mike & I also took the girls to Siesta Key Village with our best buds! Trick-or-treating in the Village was a lot of fun. Even though it was horribly HOT, trick-or-treating in Village had a lot of perks. First of all, it was from 3-6pm, so we still had plenty of daylight. Second, the sidewalks are wide, smooth and far from traffic. Third, the participating businesses are easily accessible and had black & orange balloons to lead all the trick-or-treaters in. In 90 minutes the girls had buckets of candy so full and heavy we had to lighten their load by emptying their candy into an extra Halloween tote that we brought just in case!

Tinkerbell (minus the wings) & Belle

Looking for those black & orange balloons! It looks like Gilligan's has candy!

WoW! It was soooo HOT!

Getting treats from the hostess at the Daiquiri Deck!

Getting treats at SKOB!

Hair salons, real estate offices, banks, souvenir shops, ice cream shops, restaurants... you name it! They all had tons of yummy candy and loved seeing all of the kids in their costumes! Despite the relentless heat, we really enjoyed trick-or-treating in Siesta Key Village. I think that we'll be making this a yearly family tradition. Especially because Halloween will again, fall on school nights... plus the candy haul was quite impressive for such a short block of time!

After our adventure in the Village; Jackie, Mike & I took the kids to Mc Donald's for an early dinner. (Brad wasn't off work yet) Then we went to Auntie Lauren's for a quick visit and then we met back up with our best buds the Hacketts and our new friends the Papineaus in the Hillview neighborhood for MORE trick-or-treating!

Conner & Collin are ready for more candy!

It was getting dark, just in time to visit our first house!

Maddy loved her blinking pumpkin flashlight!

Happy Halloween!

Maddy, Ben, Mikayla, Collin & Conner on their way to the best and coolest house in the neighborhood! The Hillview streets were swarming with trick-or-treaters! It was crazy! Almost too crazy!

There was one house that was spinning cotton candy but the line was all the way down the driveway and onto the street. We took a pass on that house! Most of the neighbors that were handing out candy were hanging out in small groups on their driveways, which were smart decisions, otherwise their doorbells would have been ringing nonstop!

Our kiddos looking for candy amongst the bones next to the graveyard!

Spooky! They also visited the side of the house where a real vampire crawled out of a tool chest and gave them candy!!!

This family really goes all out for Halloween! Here's Mikayla checking out the huge inflatable skeleton. I'm curious how they decorate their house for Christmas!

This was the first house in Hillview that we visited at dusk... an hour later it looked ever cooler!

So Halloween 2009 was a success! It was another fun day in the Schuth family history book especially because of how much Mikayla enjoyed herself this year. Last year she was only 16 months old for Halloween, this year at almost 28 months she fully understands the word and the meaning of CANDY!!