Over dinner one night I asked the family what they would think about not going trick-or-treating this year but instead if we wore costumes and went to dinner and a movie(we have a dollar theater near by) or bowling. To my surprise no one whined and instead I heard a bunch of excited, "yes!" answers, with fist punches in the air. And Elisabeth even added, "Good, cause I hate being out in the cold and dark for so long." So that's exactly what we did. I'm not sure if this will be a forever tradition, though I certainly wouldn't mind, but if they decide to go back to trick-or-treating again, I'll be okay with it, though I'll enforce the rule I had before which is that they can pick out a couple of pieces of candy and the rest we buy off of them(not for much, just a few dollars) and Scott takes the remaining candy to work to share(I hope, he shares :)).
On the way to the bowling alley
It's not a long drive, but Annabelle refuses to nap so whenever we get in the car, if it's the late afternoon, she is out within minutes, sometimes even seconds. 
Me and the two oldest girls dressed up as witches, Charles was a ninja and Jane was a pumpkin. Scott was himself. Boring! :) Just teasing you Scott.
Jane happy to walk around the bowling alley
Scott helped the kids steady the rack which they would roll their balls down
You have to watch this 15 second video clip below. It's of Annabelle bowling and it's hilarious. The only video we took while bowling was of Annabelle because she got so into it. Once her ball was rolling she'd jump up and down and yell! All the kids were pretty intense. They must get it from Scott :). Just kidding, he's not intense, he just cared more about my very poor bowling skills than I did(I'm sure because he didn't want me to feel bad, but that particular feeling was far from me :)). He gave me some pointers which helped my score but I still lost and I don't think I even got to 50 points, while he and a couple of the other kids were in the hundreds! Oh well, like I said, I really don't mind :). Okay, enough talking. Watch this!After bowling we went to dinner at TGIFridays(the kids request). By the time we got there it was 630pm and quite dark. All the staff was dressed in costumes and it was SO not crowded which was SO nice. We got right in, got our food right away which was nice because we were all very hungry, and ordered vanilla ice cream for dessert which ended up being on the house because our waiter was just so pleased to have some customers :). I really hope we get to do this again. It was a very nice evening. Happy Halloween! (More pictures of Halloween activities during the week prior, to come in a later post)
