Halloween

Don't believe what you hear: Halloween is not just one day. It's at least a week-long affair. Here are the pics to prove it.

Halloween Decor

No pics of ours, although we certainly have plenty. But H was obsessed with the house down the street and its vampire. Whenever I took my eyes off him for a second, he was down visiting the vampire. The vampire became especially alluring when its owners started giving him lollipops too.

Ward Trunk or Treat

Our ward trunk or treat was the Friday before Halloween. We brought white-chicken chili and lots and lots of candy to pass out. I didn't take many pics because it was extremely hard to keep track of H in a dark church parking lot. We also participated in the bishopric apple-pie-eating contest. Sweetie was determined to be Hermione this year. I found most of her costume at the Salvation Army in Massachusetts. I painted the stripes on her tie and made the wizard cloak. She got the wand from a friend's Harry Potter birthday party. Mister was a whoopie cushion, thanks to a costume borrowed from his cousin Rob, and H was Peter Pan (although he insisted for a while that he was Superman). Alas, the garden gnome costume did not pan out this year. I was going to be a glow-in-the-dark stick figure, but my costume fell apart just as we were getting into the van. Maybe next year.

Class Parties

The kids and I made cupcakes for Sweetie's class party. We decided to try scary faces. Then the kids decided to try to make those scary faces on their own faces.

I helped in Mister's class by bringing in 30 baggies of candy corns and manning the bingo-game station. The school also has a Halloween parade to the tune of "Monster Mash," which is really fun.

Pumpkin Carving. Mister and Sweetie drew their own designs. I did H's to be a Dr. Jekyll/Mister Hyde pumpkin, just like H is. One minute hugs and kisses, the next minute screaming and throwing-things fits.

Pumpkin Painting with the Neighbors

Halloween Night! Our neighbors all brought their dinners out, one lit a fire in their fire pit, and we canvased the neighborhood until H had enough.

More catching up: Halloween

Halloween seems so long ago. But I need to post about the festivities because I'm printing my blog into a family book. (That's the idea, anyway. The way I move these days, we'll hope it happens.)

The actual Halloween--our neighbors barbequed tri-tip and chicken, we all brought sides and sat out and ate together. It was so nice to get to know our fun neighbors better. Here's the collection of kids and grandkids:

The ward trunk-or-treat and fall festival. This was so fun this year. We had Navajo tacos, caramel apples, lots of fun games and bounce houses for the kids, costume and trunk competitions, trunk-or-treating, and J even participated in the pie-eating contest (out of force, given his strong anti-pie sentiments). J also manned one of the rick-shaws. Needless to say, I spent a good portion of the night chasing H and trying to find the other kids.

Our trunk and our kids and our ostrich-rider:

I was a porcupine. H a turtle.

Dorothy and the sick turtle and the mad scientist

The jack 0' lanterns

Halloween

Here's Sweetie the Astronaut, Mister as G.I. Joe, and H as a Turtle for the ward Trunk or Treat and then as a Bear on Halloween. Sweetie dressed as a witch for her dance class party because she had to be able to do ballet and tap with her costume (her teacher probably assumed all of the little girls would come as princesses or fairies or butterflies or something, not knowing that Sweetie is apparently above the whole princess thing). Mister also dressed up at school for the annual costume parade. Fun times, but I'm glad it's over and done. I wish I could say the same for the candy . . .

Sweetie's Halloween Party

Sweetie wanted to have a Halloween party this year. Thinking of how she'll be in Kindergarten next year, I agreed. Morning of as I tried to prepare for party, nurse baby, get baby to sleep, I thought, "What was I thinking?!" But all came together and H cooperated fairly well with little attention during the party. We've never had a party with just girls, and I'll do it again in a heartbeat! They took turns finding clues on the treasure hunt and wanted to play musical gravestones until everyone had a turn winning. We also decorated haunted houses (put together in advance using meringue frosting) and decorated pumpkins using free downloadable labels from Blonde Designs. We ate mummy dogs, apple slices, and spider cupcakes.