Our Little Monkey

We celebrated Halloween with one party and two rounds of trick-or-treating. As you can tell from the pictures, Clara was a monkey for Halloween. My Mom made her costume, isn't it impressive? Clara tolerated it but didn't seem to be a big fan. She wouldn't move after we put her in it; instead, she just sat and stared at us. We joked that if we get tired of her getting into everything, we can just put the monkey suit on so she'll sit still.

The tail was our favorite part of the costume!

Yesterday we took Clara to Matt's work to trick-or-treat (really it was just to show her off). We would let her try to grab a piece of candy out of the bowl, and we chose for her if she tried to grab something that we wasn't one of our favorites. Everyone at Matt's company dresses up for Halloween so Matt was in full costume and kept saying "who ya gonna call?" (Not really, but I thought he should say that and sing the theme song.) My favorite costume at Matt's work was a guy dressed up like a gift--he was wearing a wrapped box with a bow on it. I asked him what he was, and he was like--"isn't it obvious? I'm God's gift to women!"

Today Lesley had a Halloween party for her friends, and Clara was invited. It was mostly for the parents to line-up the kids for pictures and laugh. We had a lot of fun and were cracking up at our little ones in full costume. Clara was not amused. She just sat there with a frown and a glare on her face. I'm sure she's already plotting her revenge for when she's older!

Clara, Evan (firefighter), Jayden (Monkey), and Lesley (Elmo on-the-move)

The three little monkeys (Clara, Jayden, and Brody).

The last part of our day was trick-or-treating at the neighbors. We walked to a few houses of our neighbors close by and showed her off (and scored some candy for ourselves). At each place, we would let Clara grab a piece of candy from the bowl, and then we would put it in her basket. On our way to the fourth house, I noticed something sticking out of her mouth--it was a gum wrapper from a piece of double bubble gum! She had stuck and entire piece of that round gum into her mouth wrapper and all. We were laughing pretty hard and were trying to figure out how she did that without us noticing! We walked a little further, and I noticed another piece sticking out of her mouth! We have no idea how she got two pieces in without us or the neighbor noticing. Obviously we need to talk less and watch what little hands are up to.

The whole family. Notice Elsie is in costume as well!


I was excited to get an "action shot" of Clara reaching into the candy bowl. We think this may have been when she snagged the two pieces of gum.