Post Halloween

Mystery Baby enjoyed being surrounded by the big kids' Halloween candy (and the big kids as they sorted it out).

Princess Sparkley thought it would be fun to stick Mystery Baby's hands in his pockets.  We only got one in there long enough for a picture.

This is Halloween! This is Halloween!

Pumpkin Carving

 We drove down to Richmond so we could Trick or Treat with the cousins.  Here we are carving pumpkins Tuesday night.

Little Guy drew a face on his pumpkin with permanent marker and had me carve it.

Princess Sparkley's pumpkin has McKayla Maroney lips.

PS was excited that both she and Buddy independently decided to have pumpkins with one star eye and one moon eye. This is Buddy's pumpkin.  It also has a FIFA 2012 tag.

Close up of Little Guy's.

Mystery Baby's.  I added a mouth I was going to stick a binky in, but I forgot to stick a binky in it.

Trunk or Treat

 Poor fourth child, I totally failed to get a picture of Mystery Baby dressed in PS's old Sweet Pea costume (we're saying he's a green bean to make it more masculine).  Good thing I still have regular Halloween to get a picture of him.  Unless Hurricane Sandy messes that up...

Angry Bird, Bomb Bird

http://mckaylaisnotimpressed.tumblr.com/

US Olympic Gymnast

Soccer Referee

 At the Ward's Trunk or Treat 10/27/12

A friend from church captured this cute picture of Little Guy.

Trick or Treating

I stayed home to pass out candy and B took the kids around our neighborhood.  I downloaded the Star Wars theme song and the Imperial March onto my cell phone, pushed play, and threw my phone in Little Guy's treat bag so they had background music as they trick or treated.  And, I made B carry Yoda on his arm.

Carving Pumpkins

Each year the kids draw a picture of what they want their pumpkin to look like and B and I do our best to carve them that way.  I gutted all the pumpkins this year and carved the two simpler designs (Princess Sparkley's and Little Guy's), B did Buddy's pumpkin.  I had my hands up to the elbows in pumpkin guts, so the kids did a lot of the picture taking.

This is several years running the Buddy has had us carve his pumpkin to match his costume. 

PS wanted it to look like it just drank sour lemonade.

Decorating Cupcakes

Our homeschool family book club book this month was My Monster Mama Loves Me.  And it worked out perfectly that we had to change the date of book club and ended up with it being on Halloween so the kids could have a Halloween party and decorate cupcakes to look like monsters.  Except the family who was hosting came down with a case of lice and had to cancel.  Instead, we invited one of the other families (the As) who lives in town (the host family lives about 35 minutes away) to decorate cupcakes with us.  She made little chocolate train cupcakes and I made orange frosting.  The kids had a great time.

Br. is a year younger than Princess Sparkley and they are also in the same Girl Scout troop (except Br. is a Brownie and PS is a Junior this year).  A is maybe 6 years old.  And there are two little boys not pictured, Be. is 4 and J is 2.

Pumpkins

We never got around to buying pumpkins last week and were stuck with picking some up Halloween morning.  Note for next year, buy one get one free isn't a super great deal when the pumpkins are huge and 89 cents a pound. 

Trick-or-Treating

Another woman in the Relief Society presidency with me at church suggested we send around a sign-up to see if any families at church would be willing to let kids trick-or-treat at their homes on Saturday since Halloween is on a Sunday this year. A bunch of families signed up so we got the kids dressed up and made it to about half of the 30 some houses tonight, driving all over town.

And here is Cookie Monster saying "cooooookie" and singing, "C is for cookie, is good enough for me."

Pumpkin Carving

We carved the kids pumpkins tonight. I did Buddy's and Little Guy's. Buddy wanted an Army Guy pumpkin* to match him. This seems to be a theme with him since last year he and his pumpkin were both firemen and I'm pretty sure that he had me carve his pumpkin to look like a mailman the year before. I asked Little Guy what he wanted his pumpkin to look like and he said, "Cookie Monster." As soon as I cut the top off his pumpkin he got very emotional and asked me I why I was taking his pumpkin apart. We had to show him some pictures of jack-o-lanterns so he understood what we were doing with the pumpkins. Princess Sparkley had a hard time deciding on what her pumpkin should be. We saw a fairy house pumpkin online that she really liked, but she finally settled on a princess pumpkin, complete with accessories. And Daddy carved it for her.


*But then he had me write Navy on the pumpkins name tag.

**The glittery pumpkins on top of my bookshelf were made my Princess Sparkley at her Activity Days activity earlier in the week.

Halloween Party at Church

The kids were super excited for tonight because it was the ward Halloween party/carnival/chili cook-off/costume parade/trunk-or-treat. All squished into one incredibly long and crowded event.

But with it comes... the unveiling of costumes, and how their costumes came about:

Princess Sparkley as Pippi Longstocking
complete with freshly dyed (6-12 washes) red hair
PS wanted to be a character from a novel last year too, but picks books that only 6-8 year old girls have read and know about. This year, she actually wanted to be Annika, Pippi's best friend, and I had to explain that Annika was just a normal girl, like PS already is. She was very happy at the end of the night when she told me lots of grown-ups knew who she was. But with that comes the unspoken... not many kids did and she had to explain it a lot. Oh well, she loved it. AND, she won the "silliest costume" award, a little trophy, for her age group. Her dress is an oversized shirt from Walmart ($5) and mismatched socks from Target ($1 per pair). Everything else (other than the hair dye and wires in her hair) we already owned. I ironed on patches from scraps of fabric we had and called it good.


Buddy as an Army Guy
Buddy was almost a UPS man again this year. And almost a pizza delivery man. But he finally decided on an army guy. I chose to buy him actual camouflage clothing, rather than a costume. So after Halloween, his Old Navy shirt ($8 ish), Target pants ($9.99) and Kmart hat ($5) go into his regular wardrobe. Although I did inform him that he's not allowed to wear them all at the same time except for Halloween. He was a little disappointed that he didn't win anything, but there were a lot of great costumes there and the kid category was especially rough. I think he enjoyed that people kept pretending they couldn't see him, since he was camouflaged and all.


Little Guy as COOKIE Monster
Little Guy wouldn't agree to any costume. Finally we settled on trying to convince him to be a cookie. He turned that into, he being Cookie Monster and Daddy being the cookie. And Daddy agreed. I ordered his hat on Etsy ($8), bought Cookie colored sweat pants at Walmart ($3) and turned a Jayhawk shirt inside out and pinned a scrap fabric Cookie Monster mouth to it. Then we went to work teaching him to say, "COOOKKIIEES" in a funny deep voice. He can also sing, "C is for cookie..." I'll have to film it all. He did a great job at the trunk-or-treat and said trick-or-treat and thank you to everyone (which my older kids were always shy about doing at his age) and I even got him to tell one guy "Cccoookkiiess."


And Daddy as a COOKIE.
Two hula hoops. Tan fabric. Brown fabric. Iron on sticky stuff. Packing tape. A glue gun.





Oh, and I won "most original chili." This makes two years running my chili has won (different recipes, different categories).