Pumpkin Carving Party and Trunk or Treat

Pumpkin Carving Party:
This past week, we were invited to Mark and Missy's house with Jon and Julie for their annual pumpkin carving party! Missy made a delicious pot of chili and had lots of other munchies on hand for us and the kids. Then they bravely spread two huge sheets of paper across their living room floor, put out two buckets for the "gunk," and let us have at it!
Mark and Missy had an impressive collection of pumpkin carving utensils, including patterns and the really good kind of scoopers. Matt and I usually carve a pumpkin each year, even if it is only to leave it on the front porch when we go do something else on Halloween. That's what mine was for this year, so I drew and carved a friendly man-in-the-moon smiling face.
Matt carved his pumpkin into a helmet to use as part of his costume for trunk or treat, but didn't know yet quite what kind of helmet it would be. He (we really, I knew he would!) had a hard time convincing everybody that he would actually wear a pumpkin on his head, but it turned out amazing!

Trunk or Treat:
We spent all day Thursday and Friday running around decorating, making games, and taking trips to Wal-mart for supplies to set up trunk or treat for Friday night. It was a pretty stressful thing, especially not knowing how many kids to plan for, since this is a big outreach event for the church and lots of neighborhood and local kids show up, but I think it turned out well!

We didn't get to take too many pictures since we were so busy setting up and then running everything, but luckily, Matt came and grabbed me in time when people started tearing down and putting things away that we got a few pictures! My favorite part was painting signs for some of the games and a big banner for the kitchen island.
Our games included face painting, a balloon dart board, beanbag throw, basketball toss, cup and ball toss, a cupcake walk, a gift card raffle, costume competition, and bobbing for apples! Then we lined the 200-plus kids and families to trick or treat through the circle of trunks, which included a great white Jaws and a steer-roping truck!
As for costumes, I wanted to do something fun in case I am never 9 months pregnant again on Halloween... and this smart girl also figured out a way to basically wear pajamas the whole night! I made one of Matt's old white shirts into an egg with a deviled yolk (paprika and all!) and wore green fleece pants as a 'bed of lettuce' underneath... I was a deviled egg!
After Matt made his pumpkin helmet, he said he wanted to paint a big glow-in-the-dark cross on his face and black out the rest, so I jokingly said he would look like a Christ-o'lantern instead of a jack-o'lantern... and he loved it! So he wore all black and I painted his face, and he wore his pumpkin helmet the whole night while guiding the kids through the trunks. This is the only picture we got of us together in our costumes:
What an exhausting but fun time!