Light Up The Night

Halloween is almost here, and that means it is time for Red Butte Garden After Dark. This has become a tradition for our family. This year we were joined again by Kevin, Alisa and Asher, and Grandma and Grandpa Bolander. That makes it even more fun.

Garden After Dark is also a good place to try out our outfits, before the big day. Valerie was happy to put on her princess dress, so I took a few pictures of her smiling in it before we left.

Ryan joined in the Angry Bird fun and dressed up as the King Pig.

The theme this year was "Light Up The Night."

As always the kids had fun with the simple yet creative spots along the path. The first stop was to paint our pumpkins. We only get one pumpkin per family, but Grandma and Grandpa let us have theirs. So the girls painted one, and the boys painted the other.

We stopped at the face painting booth next. They have a couple of people who will paint for you, but they also have places where you can do your own. We opted for doing our own.


After we got the painting out of the way, we headed into the garden for some glow in the dark fun. We colored owl masks with highlighters so they would glow in the black lights.

Then we wished upon a star with a yellow highlighter, and hung our stars in black light lit trees, so our wishes could be seen. Joe wished for an i-phone. He will be wishing for that for a long long time.

We made mushrooms out of white lunch sacks and planted them in the black lit mushroom forest.

In The rose garden we made tissue paper flowers, and spayed them with something that would glow in the black light.

And to end our adventure we walked through the kids favorite part of the trail. The spooky forest. Where everything glowed.



Before we left the garden we had a treat of hot chocolate and caramel apples.

By this time Emily, had decided that fake fingernails would not be part of her costume anymore, and before she could enjoy her treats she had to take them off.

This year I got in on the Angry Bird action too and dressed as the slingshot. Because our whole family dressed up, I wanted a picture, but I didn't think of it until the end of the night. So this is the best that we could do. Sometimes the character shot are the best ones anyway.

We always have a good time together at the Garden.

This year I loved the black lights throughout the path, because that is one of my kids favorite things......Mine too.