Eat, Drink, and Be Scary!

Earlier this month, Jacob (Nathan’s favorite cousin) invited all his similarly aged cousins to have a Halloween sleepover at his house. Nathan was super excited about it, but when I asked him if he wanted to trick or treat with Jacob or in our neighborhood, he was torn. This is his last year for trick or treating (in my family the kids only trick or treat until they turn twelve) and we have a really fun neighborhood for trick or treating. People sit on their porches or their lawns to hand out candy. There are homemade doughnuts, hot dogs, sometimes even pizza to be had. There are as many adults roaming the neighborhood as there are kids…and not in a creepy way either. It is a really family friendly location. So Nathan really wanted to be able to trick or treat around here for his last year but definitely wanted to party with his cousins as well. So we hatched a plan to have all the cousins trick or treat here and then go to Jacob’s house for the sleepover. Before long, it evolved into a Halloween themed dinner/trick or treating event.

We fed the kiddies worm sandwiches and jello brains before we hit the street. They were all so hyped up that I was surprised they managed to eat anything, but they actually did. Then it was on to the main event. Nathan and the older cousins went on their way and the littler kids stayed with the adults. It was super fun!

The over twelve crowd had their own celebration. They did baptisms for the dead and then had their own party that included dinner, games, a movie and candy, of course!

Here are my kiddos in their Halloween attire:

Daniel as Dr. Who (the 10^th doctor)

Nathan as a stick figure (during the day he had black electrical tape for the lines and he used glow sticks at night)

Matthew as a BYU football player

Malia as Rapunzel

Carving Out Memories

Due to much business travel for Kev this month, pumpkin carving happened at the last minute.

Matthew was literally up to his armpits in pumpkin guts.

Malia was super excited that she got to play with knives.

And Daniel and Nathan are definitely my children. Like me, they both stick out their tongues when they are concentrating.

We ended up with Daniel’s cool looking dragon pumpkin…

Malia’s Elsa pumpkin…

Matthew’s BYU football pumpkin…

and Nathan’s Olaf pumpkins.

I firmly believe that the carving of the pumpkins in the important part because it is fun. Having perfectly carved pumpkins in nowhere near as important as having a bunch of happy kids. Based on the happiness scale, I think this year’s pumpkin carving event was a definite success. Don’t you agree?

Where the Wild Things Are

The correct answer to that would be…preschool…on Halloween. Seriously, they were aaaaaalllllll jazzied up. Malia was totally excited that she finally got to wear her costume. (It’s been in hiding since I finished it last month. Otherwise she would have been in it every day.) The other kids were equally excited to wear their costumes. The whole thing was kind of like trying to herd a bunch a cats. Here is our attempt at getting a group photo:

See what I mean about the herding cats thing?

But they did have fun making monster stew and playing a keep the pumpkin off the ground game.

As far as Malia is concerned, her first ever school Halloween party was a great success!

The Witching Hour

Pinterest is a great place to glean fun ideas for holidays and over the last few weeks I have seen a vast assortment of things that looked entertaining. Malia’s hairdo of the day was a Halloween themed Pinterest discovery.

In spite of the fact that I would be creeped out at the thought of spiders crawling on my head (feeling pretty icked out just typing it…), Malia thought it was super cool. She was also excited because we were headed for an outing with my sister Rachael and her daughter Kate. The combo of holiday hair, a seasonal t-shirt and an impending outing meant she was pretty hyped up and it turned into this:

Very appropriate for Halloween, right?

Anyway, our outing was to see the witches at Gardner Village which is something we’ve never done before. With only the two little girls, it was a pretty low ksmey affair. We moved at a stroll rather than a stride and just kind of took our time. Once Malia figured out that we were looking for witches, she was pretty attentive to what was going on around us. And of course, a cookie at the end was great to!

There Are Still Good People in the World

Matthew wants to be a football player for Halloween. That is not a costume I was going to attempt to make, so we started asking around and have been able to borrow some padded pants and a jersey from one of my visiting teachers. All we lacked was a helmet. And you definitely can’t be a tackle football player without a helmet so we headed to our local Spirit Halloween store to see if we could find one. Matthew and I did a quick lap of the store and didn’t find anything, so we headed back to the front to ask an employee. I think the man we ended up asking was a manager because when he sadly had to tell us that he didn’t even get any football or cheerleader costumes in this year and Matthew was looking disappointed, he took us to the one thing he had that was close and then gave us a 50% discount because it wasn’t exactly what we wanted and would take a bit of work on our part. His philosophy is that he is there to make the kids happy…and he did. We took our purchase home and turned this…

…into this.

Needless to say, I said, “Thank you!” More than once in fact. And I’m pleased we were able to make it work so easily because I’m pretty sure they don’t allow beer in the second grade…

As for Matthew, he’s thrilled. He is wearing his helmet all the time and even making it into a functional accessory.

Indian Summer

It’s almost the end of October and we still have days where the temperature is nearly 80 degrees. Although I’m not a fan of the heat, the warm weather has made for some pleasant outings for Malia and me. I had an appointment with my neurologist on Wednesday which meant a trip to the zoo. This is the first time we’ve visited since the latest construction project was completed and Malia was super excited to ride the train and finally see the lions!

Today Malia had a field trip to the pumpkin patch. She has been looking forward to this field trip all month and has been giving me daily reminders about her “pumpkin trip.” Can I just tell you how much we love our little local pumpkin grower? There are other pumpkin patches in the area, but none of the others have this:

Or this:

Or this:

Malia had a great time and can hardly wait to go again with the whole family so she can choose another pumpkin!

This is How Awesome Our Preschool Is...

They celebrated International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Yes, I know it was actually last month, but still, eight three-year-olds saying, "Arrrrrgh!" is pretty entertaining. :-)

The Fine Art of Manipulation

While I was getting dressed this morning, I overheard the following conversation:

Matthew: “I’m not getting it for you!”

Malia: [whining]

Matthew: “I’m not your slave!”

Malia: “Yes you are!”

Matthew: “I’m not your slave!”

Malia: “Yes you are!”

Matthew: “Fine, I’ll get it but I’m not your slave!”

Malia: [laughing]

It would appear that Malia has discovered that she has her brothers wrapped around her finger and is fully prepared to take advantage of that fact. I can hardly wait to see what she does to all the boys when she hits high school…(FYI: that last bit was to be read with sarcasm)