.garden after dark.

I guess you could say I had a string of good luck in October. I actually won 2 prizes off Good Things Utah. The first was a family day pass to the Dinosaur Park in Ogden. (not super exciting since we have a membership there anyway) and then about 4 days later...I won again. This time it was tickets to Red Butte Garden's, Garden after dark event! Now, this one I was SUPER excited for. Bummer part was I had to drive all the way to Salt Lake to pick up the tickets. But, we made a nice visit of it and met Mom at Arctic Circle for lunch. When I went to pick up the tickets, the front desk lady was kinda snooty. She said that I couldn't win two prizes in one month. Which was fine, but I had just driven an hour to pick them up so I needed a little slack. In the end, they only let me collect one prize...but I could choose which one I wanted. Yay!

We loaded up the kids and attended on Saturday evening. We stopped and ate dinner at Training Table before we went up.

The theme of the event was 'Haunted Holidays around the world'. They had displays and crafts set up all around the park and we could wander around and make anything we wanted to.

First we did pumpkin painting and face painting.

Each family got a pumpkin to paint and decorate to take home. We divided our pumpkin into thirds and let the kids go at it.

Face painting was next. Gage was the only child enthusiastic about that. He happily got a silly bat! TJ thought it was dumb and Brynn wasn't letting a stranger into her personal space.

She did let me give it a go and ended up with a pretty princess heart, we told her that's what it was anyway!

I had my camera all charged and ready to go, as soon as we got to the main gate to take a picture, I realized my memory card was at home in the computer! Josh's iphone saved the day!

I also drew a bat on Josh's cheek! I thought my rendition looked better than Gages. You can see it a little bit here, didn't get a better picture.

Mexico's day of the dead masks were next. It involved lots of intricate coloring. We could have left Gage at this station the whole time. He loves to color! You could also glue seeds and dried flowers to your mask.

The kids were able to make lanterns. Can you see the cute scary faces on the boys crafts! Eeep, it took alot of will power for me to let those cute things go!

They then went down to the water, lit their candles and then floated them down on the water.

Other activities included, this spooky walk with black lights. We laughed at each other and our glowing bright smiles. There was mazes and storytellers. We made aboriginal dolls out of clothes pins and magic potion necklaces. SO FUN, I'd pay to go again for sure!