We've had a lot
of fun celebrating fall this year. The last two years I've been pregnant
and sick so it's been fun to actually feel well enough to enjoy the holidays more
fully.
At the beginning
of the month we got out our Halloween storage tub and decorated the house.
We don't have much but the kids had fun with what little we have.
Jason was especially excited to put up some decorations, though he's requested
we get some outside decorations for next year.
We keep most of
our old costumes in the same tub as the decorations so we looked to see what
costumes anyone could fit into. We already knew Katie would be a
princess, I'm pretty sure this is our sixth Halloween we've had a Cinderella.
Jason liked his makeshift pirate getup so much from pirate day that he
wanted to be a pirate again for Halloween. Carly fit into an old Dorothy
costume of Abigail's and Abigail is tall enough now that she can wear my one
and only costume, a fair maiden. It felt awesome to be several weeks
away from Halloween and already know what everyone was going to be and not have
to purchase anything; usually we scrabble for costumes at the last minute.
In the same tub
we found several old Halloween t-shirts for the girls to wear throughout the
month. Katie had quite the
selection to choose from.
I remembered just
last week that I’d purchased a cute glow-in-the-dark skeleton outfit for Drew
after Halloween last year. We’ll
get good use out of it, even it that means he’ll be wearing it until Christmas.
Before October
even started a friend shared a fun countdown to Halloween printable she'd found
online. I decided to put it in a frame so we could cross off the days
with an orange marker. The kids looked forward to taking turns marking
off the days and it was a neat way to answer the often asked question of “How
many days until Halloween?”
We finally made
it back to a pumpkin patch this year. Just the other day Katie commented
about how fun it was to find all the monsters. This was such a fun activity for the whole family; I'm so glad
we were able to find a time to fit it in.
Abigail and I
baked these fun candy corn cookies twice during the month
A few years ago I
was I inspired by a friend to purchase some adorable spider cupcake holders.
This year I finally got them out and put them to use. We used them
to hold candy corns near our Halloween countdown (until we eaten the entire bag
of candy corns) and I also surprised the kids with banana chocolate chip
muffins one afternoon.
Abigail enjoyed a
Halloween party with her activity day group this last Friday night and then we
all had fun attending our ward Halloween party on Saturday night. I'm glad the
party left the trick-or-treating for Halloween and just had dinner and games
for the kids to enjoy. It was really well planned and lots of fun.
Yesterday I
decided Katie needed to watch Cinderella since the poor girl really has no clue
who any of the princesses are. She was so nervous about the “scary
sisters” before the show started that she asked me to watch it with her (an opportunity
for me to take a little nap). Now she’s prepared to be Cinderella for the big
day.
Last night – for
the very first time EVER – we carved pumpkins. It’s shameful that it’s taken us this long to do this as a
family, but hopefully we can make it an annual tradition in the years to come. We invited a neighborhood family over
to join us for pizza and pumpkin carving.
A few other neighborhood kids decided to join us as well. There wasn’t enough pumpkins to go
around, but the kids did a good job teaming up and they all had fun.
Carly and Summer
carved the cupcake & “yum” pumpkin, Abigail carved the small ice cream
cone, and Jason and two of his friends carved the big face. Katie helped carve a pumpkin that the
neighbors took home.
Justin is using
one of his mandatory days off on Halloween. We're planning on going out
for lunch and then I get to volunteer in Jason's classroom for his
"Harvest Party". I don’t get why they can’t just call it a
Halloween party. They are allowing
the first-graders to dress up under the disguise that they can dress up as
their favorite storybook characters.
What’s even more confusing to me is why they are so strict about it in
elementary while Abigail’s school is encouraging everyone to come dressed in
costume.
The kids can’t wait to score
monstrous amounts of candy tomorrow and plan to go trick-or-treating as long as
possible. Let’s be honest I’m just
as excited as the kids for the big night out.
As I type this I just thought
of a fun post-trick-or-treating idea.
Well “fun” if you have a analytical type A mind like I do…
