HALL-O-WEEN Dixon Style

This was a Halloween to remember!  We'll start at the very beginning (a very good place to start).  For family night we carved our pumpkins!

 Lily was all about getting her hands messy.

 Jeremiah was all about the Halloween cookies.

 You wouldn't believe how many tries it took to get a semi-normal picture of me and Lily with our pumpkin.  And this was no ordinary pumpkin!  This pumpkin was grown in grandpa Dixon's garden!  And brought to us by grandma when she came to visit at the beginning of the month.  We've saved it for a long time, and I think it turned out great!

 Difficult picture taking is going to be a theme throughout this blog post.  Lily would NOT look at the camera, and Samuel isn't wearing any clothes.  That's just how we roll in AZ in October.

 I tried to do a "photo shoot" of the kids in their costumes a couple days before Halloween.  FAIL!  This was the best shot I got of the three of them.

 But I did get this sweet shot of Spiderman doing spidey moves!

 And the final results from the Dixon family pumpkin carving!

 Next up on our Halloween fun was the Friday before Halloween.  Parker's school throws a big trick-or-treat carnival type thing for all the students' kids.  It was so fun!  First off, we have Rapunzel and Spiderman ready to go!

 This little dragon thought the whole walking around outside things was awesome!  Every leaf, rock, and twig was intriguing.  I think we need to get out more :)

 How can you not want to squish and kiss on that adorable fat baby?

 They had a big blow up slide and Jeremiah had gone about 4 times before Lily worked up the nerve to do it too.

 My cousin and his family were also there.  Samuel and Oliver are buds and had some catching up to do.

And of course, the family shot!  And after this totally fun adventure, it was on to the ward trunk-or-treat!

My camera was acting up, so I really only got 3 pictures from the trunk-or-treat.

 Parker randomly took this picture while trying to get my flash to work.  Not sure what all the sadness and sorrow was about, but this baby sure can make a sad face!

 Here's the trunk with the treats, and the hander-outers.

 And you'll be happy to see that this poor, sad baby dragon was once again happy.  I'd say this picture is trunk-or-treating at it's finest.

Here is where things got dicey.  The short version of the story is that I got a rash that I didn't know was shingles, which caused severe migraines, taking me completely out of commission.  This of course was also the week before Parker's finals . . .  Enter Mom Dixon to save the day!!  She and dad Dixon were planning on coming down for the weekend for a conference, but mom took pity on us and came down on Halloween to save us all!!

So while I battled a migraine, mom and Parker took the kids around the neighborhood to a few houses to trick-or-treat.  They said they had lots of fun and everybody thought the kids were so cute (of course)!  

I am happy to report that after a trip to the ER and a follow-up appt with my family Dr., we finally discovered the shingles and I am starting day 4 of treatment tomorrow.  The migraines are gone and the pain is very manageable now.  I appreciate my health on a whole new level!  I also appreciate my amazing mother-in-law on a whole new level!  She and dad even took Jeremiah and Lily back to Las Vegas with them for the rest of the week so that I could make a full recovery!  Now I just need to figure out what to do with all this candy? . . .