Sunday, November 8, 2009

Heck of a Long Halloween Post

Halloween has come and gone and my kids keep asking when it's going to come again. Not for a whole nother year, my pretties. But we probably have enough candy to last us until then. And pictures too, as you are about to see!

This year I decided to upgrade some of my decorations to go with the decor of our front room. I was pleased with them.


TRUNK OR TREAT
The weekend before Halloween was the ward Trunk or Treat. I'm sad to report that for the first time in history, I did not win any prizes in the soup cook off. To my defense, they did not announce ahead of time that it was a contest, so I did not put my best effort into it. I tried a new recipe (dangerous move). It was good, but I actually voted for someone else's, which goes against everything I stand for when it comes to cooking contests. Namely, winning. However, there was a soup that I liked better than mine and I had to have culinary integrity. Perhaps if I had voted for myself, I would have gotten my 4th win, but it wouldn't have felt right.

So, here's our little lady bug. She actually insisted that she was not a lady bug, she was a "Halloween Bug," and was much more cooperative about putting on the costume when we called it that. (Dressing up isn't her thing). This was the first time we put her in her costume, so she got the full treatment. Curled hair, make-up, etc. You'll notice throughout this post that by the last time we dressed up (actual Halloween) things had gone dramatically down hill.


Here is our ninja boy, showing us his muscles.


The best thing about both of these costumes was that they were hand-me-downs. AKA - Free. Thank you Kelly and Raquel. There was a small tinge of guilt when I remembered the time my mom took to sew all of our costumes and the pride I felt at having such nice costumes. I always felt sorry for the kids with store bought costumes (they have come a long way since we were kids, remember the cheap plastic outfits and flimsy masks?) But then I remembered that a) I don't really know how to sew b) I'm pregnant c) my kids don't know any different d) there are a million other things I'd rather spend my money on, and I felt a lot better.


Elizabeth with my friend Shauna's girls who were also bugs.


Enjoying the loot after the trunk-or-treating.


Our family in our "trunk."


The week that followed produced A LOT of snow and 3 canceled days of school. That's another post, but I just wanted to show the contrast of the tree from the first picture. I love that tree. It is the perfect portrait of the 4 seasons right out my front window.


HALLOWEEN DAY and NIGHT

So all month I had been wanting to stop by this little garden center by our house to take pumpkin pictures. I finally stopped at the last possible moment and grabbed a few of Elizabeth. Harrison wasn't with me and didn't have any halloweeny clothes anyway. We borrowed this dress from a friend when Elizabeth had an accident at her house. We liked it so much that we wore it again on Halloween.



Later that day, we went to my friend Julie's mom's ward's Halloween Party with them and the Jensens. The ward members had been encouraged to bring friends and family. This thing put every ward party I've ever been to to shame.


Apparently some of the ward members have deep pockets so there were a lot of receipts that weren't going to be turned in. They had the entire church decked out from floor to ceiling, a haunted house, a trick-0r-treat street where each room was fully decorated in differing themes, tons of great food, about 20 different carnival games complete with prizes AND consolation prizes. Elizabeth won this Woody doll, which I must admit I was pretty stoked about, because my kids love Toy Story (Sudy, as she calls it). We had Buzz and Zerg, but no Woody. Welcome to the family, Woody.


Harrison playing one of the games.


A tiny bit of Elizabeth's arm doing the ring toss.


At first she was timid about the games, but when she figured out that you have to play the games to get candy, she got much more into it. At one point we were waiting in line and she said, "Can we just play another game so people will give me candy?" The other funny thing that happened was that most of the games involved throwing things. So we got to this game where you were supposed to shoot a squirt gun to knock ping pong balls down. She took that squirt gun and chucked it at the balls. Pretty good reasoning skills, if you ask me, and much more effective.

That night we went trick-or-treating with the Godfreys, then later ran into the Gillespies and even later the Welches.



There was a haunted house in their neighborhood and my kids were quite brave about going in. They did the one at the ward party twice and the neighborhood one twice. Elizabeth is still talking about the scary house with the guy who had spaghetti in his belly (it was supposed to be guts).

A note about trick-or-treating. My husband is very into it. He was disappointed that we got a late start this year, because we didn't maximize our candy collecting potential. He was also bummed that we went to a neighborhood where the houses were farther apart and the walk up to the doorway was longer, because it was less efficient. At one point our friends were chatting with their neighbors and he totally ditched them saying they were a liability. When the kids got tired he took this approach.

Seriously, honey, how much candy do we need?

So, here we are with the pumpkin. Let's just say that this was not a successful pumpkin carving year. I don't really enjoy carving pumpkins, but apparently I enjoy it more than anyone else in my family. I was the Little Red Hen of pumpkin carvers, except I didn't really have anything wonderful to show for it at the end. Harrison's only contribution was picking out one of the more difficult patterns for me to carve. Since I only had a 40 minute window in which to get this necessary evil of Halloween traditions completed, I was rushing. My hand slipped and we ended up with a skull and crossbones minus one eye and a nose.


HARRISON'S SCHOOL PARTY
One of the aforementioned snow days was on the day that the Halloween parade and party were scheduled at school. Let me tell you, that's one day that kids DO NOT want to miss school (I think I was even more disappointed than he was, though). So we had a somewhat anti-climactic party on Monday, November 1. I had volunteered to help, but so many mom's came that I all I ended up doing was helping my two kids with the activities and pouring juice. The mom who planned it all was so sweet to allow the helpers to bring their little ones and had enough crafts and snacks for them to do too, so Elizabeth had a great time as well. Here she is not sure about being made into a toilet paper mummy.





Harrison and his partner had tons of fun having a toilet paper fight when they were done mummifying each other. This activity bothered me for two green reasons (financial and environmental). Did each child really need an ENTIRE roll of toilet paper?


Decorating pumpkins. I was thrilled to see Elizabeth getting really into this craft project. Crafts have never been Harrison's thing, so I usually end up doing his for him. Maybe I'll have a crafty child after all.



The teachers reported that the kids had a really hard time behaving that afternoon. Well, what do you expect after a week of Fall Break, followed by a week with 3 snow days, Halloween weekend, and party at the BEGINNING of school? When I was a teacher our parties were always the last hour of a Friday afternoon.

Whew, that was a lot of reporting to do about Halloween.

I continue to eat the majority of my kids' candy. When we were trick-or-treating, I got after them for always going for the candy instead of the chocolate when given a choice. Elizabeth finally caught on started saying, "Mommy, I get you chocolate next time." At one point Harrison yelled from a door step, "Mom, I got you some M&M's." He could have had the decency to wait for them to close the door before outing me like that. I think next year I won't try to sway their candy choices. I've gained 2 pounds this week. I wish I were kidding.

2 comments:

Melissa said...

I'm lucky. I get all of Julianna's chocolate because she's allergic to it. And I was so lazy I didn't even carve a pumpkin this year.

trishanna said...

i need to post a pumpkin carving post so hard to include everything though however you seem to get it done! just wanted you to knoe I am planning on doing your lashes when you are here so you plan on it to!