Halloween

with pictures!!!

The craziness of the week led to some simple ideas for Halloween. I do know that the holiday was arriving, but I figured we could recycle costumes from past years. The kids don't really care what they are, except Bryant, but he changed his mind 42 times a day since last Halloween. I had found this cute little cheerleading outfit at the quarter sale a few weeks ago and snagged it, hoping someone would wear it-thankfully they did!

On Wednesday, our old ward had a trunk-or-treat we were invited to. The day brought 30 degree weather with 30 mph winds and therefore feeling more like 20 degrees. We bundled up to practice our trick-or-treat manners with the 12 cars that were there. But it was oh so fun to see old friends and share our excitement of moving to a house and getting candy in the bitter cold. (yes, Bryant should be a pirate, but took off his sash and lost his eye patch before we even went to the trunk-or-treat).

This picture was taken afterwards-they were frozen!!

On Thursday, the kids all had school parties (there was no school on Friday). They each got to dress up in their costumes for the first part of the day. Like I said, the girls don't really care what they are, but apparantly they have decided they need to have multiple options-just in case the first costume doesn't suit their fancy. I think the cold weather had a lot to do with the change. Next year I hope to have more energy and motivation to actually make something for them all-I should know how to sew by then ;)

Sarah wanted to be a ballerina! She was so cute.

Kayelynn wanted to be the cheerleader...this is her attempting to pose a 'K' the cheer way!

We finally broke down and bought pumpkins on Halloween. I don't think the kids cared that much really, I think if we didn't do it they wouldn't have realized it until evening, but it's just not Halloween without the mess of pumpkins! This year we decided to have a family pumpkin and that would suffice. But once we made it to the store, they kids found "baby" pumpkins and we just couldn't say no to them. The thought was to carve the big one and decorate the others, but again, it's just not Halloween without jack-o-lanterns!

Lydia was coloring hers while she waited for hers to be carved.

Sarah delicately dug the "guts" out and really wasn't interested in that part at all.

The family pumpkin, exposing all its gooey guts.

Kayelynn getting the innards out of hers.

Bryant was too interested in the camera to get a candid photo...but he took the innards out of his too. He even carved his own, but somehow I got distracted from getting a picture of that.

After carving the pumpkins we only had about 30 minutes to get ready to go to our wards' trunk-or-treat. Once again, Bryant had lost his eye patch-yes, we had found it for his school parade, but he managed to lose it while getting dressed. So we used a marker (we found out it was NOT washable-yep, still a pirate at church the next day). And again the girls decided to dress up differently once again-all things we had in our dress up stuff. This night was actually really mellow for weather-they had predicted snow, but it was quite mild and nice. Lydia really understood what was happening since our practice run a few nights earlier and was so cute to follow, I wish I would have recorded it. She went to every single car on her own and said her version of "trich or treat" and always said "tank you" to everyone. It was so cute! She even scored more candy just for being cute! She was pretty proud of her little self for having such a loot and kept a very close guard on her bag-no one was allowed to carry it or look at it!

Happy Halloween-the best picture I could get.

It was so light when we left for trick-or-treating that we just left the pumpkins on the porch and then lit them when we got home. The kids loved seeing it! Their little lids burned up because they had such small pumpkins, but it was worth it!



Family pumpkin, Lydia's, Bryant's, Sarah's, Kayelynn's

We had a fantasticly mellow, simple holiday and everyone was happy!