Halloween Fun

Halloween is a week-long celebration at our house. Most years I love that. This year I wasn’t really feeling it, but I did my best to fake it. We recycled our Star Wars costumes from two years ago. I was afraid that Abby would hate being Yoda since she is such a little princess, but she was totally excited about it. Hurray for not having to buy/make new costumes. Here were some of the fun things we did with the kids.

Treehouse Museum Enchanted Woods

We wanted to try something new this year, so we went to the Enchanted Woods at the Treehouse. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting from the description, but the kids liked it and they got some fun prizes. On the way home they all agreed that the dinosaur park is more fun. (We haven’t been there in two years, so they might be remembering it being better than it really is.)


Primary Halloween Carnival

The Young Men and Young Women in our ward put on a Halloween Carnival for the Primary kids. They kept it simple and just had six stations that the kids rotated through. It is nice that our kids are old enough to do their own thing. Nate and I got to chat with some neighbors while they played the games. It was great. I was a lazy mom and convinced the kids that it would be cool to all just wear Halloween shirts so we didn’t have to do the whole costume routine.


School Parade and Parties

Thursday was the kids’ parade and class parties. We headed over early to see Ben and Emily parade through with their classes. Nate stayed and played Don’t Eat Pete with 12 groups of second graders. He’s such a good sport to do all of these things that I sign him up for. The kindergarteners had their own little parade in the afternoon. Elise’s teacher invited Abby to join them. She was a big hit with all the moms that were watching. After the parade, I got my turn to play Don’t Eat Pete with the kids in Elise’s class. Nate was done in Emily’s class, so he came down to hang out with us. It was a good fun time.




Friend Party and Ben Date

The girls got invited to a little Halloween party at our neighbors’ house. They played games, made crafts, watched Halloween movies, and came home with a bag full of prizes. They had a great time. Nate and I were happy to have some one on one time with Ben. We went to Arby’s for lunch and then watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It worked out perfectly with the movie getting over exactly one minute before the girls got home.


Family Party

Friday night my family came over for a little party. We ate good food and played fun games. The kids had loads of fun playing with their cousins. I was glad to find out that grass stains and green face paint washed right out of Elise’s all white costume.






Pseudo Halloween

Since we live in Utah, we celebrated Halloween a day early. It was great to have all day Saturday to play. We carved pumpkins in the morning. The kids were all very excited about making their own designs and, with the exception of Abby, they did all of the carving on their own. Ben was especially pleased with his 27 pound Star Wars masterpiece. It took him over an hour to finish carving it. He’s asked me 53 times if I have “put a picture of it on Google yet.” This blog post is as close as he is going to get to internet fame. :)

After pumpkins, we got the kids in their costumes and headed down to Lee’s for some trick-or-treating. It was pretty packed. Apparently everyone has discovered that it is a fun Halloween activity. The kids collected their loot and then we headed to Wienerschnitzel for lunch (had to use up last year’s Happenings coupons before they expired).

The kids watched Private Eyes when we got home and then we got ready for trick-or-treating. It was raining a bit, but Nate busted out the umbrellas and headed out with the kids. I got to stay home and pass out candy in my cool Darth Vader mask. Judging by the terrified expressions on a few kids’ faces, I must have looked pretty authentic. The plan was for Nate to make the rounds in our immediate neighborhood, and then I would take the older kids out for a while longer. Abby and Elise were still raring to go after round one, so we turned off the lights and all went out together to hit a few more houses. The weather turned out to be fabulous and we had a good time. The kids came home with a TON of candy . . . more than would fit in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag (each). Elise’s bag is significantly smaller than anyone else’s. She got just as much candy; she has just already eaten half of it. Her ability to consume candy is legendary. The quote of the day was when she pulled out a little bag of baby carrots that someone had given her and with an incredulous tone said “people think these are treats?!?!?” I’m pretty sure that is the only wrapper that won’t be opened in the next two days.






Halloween

We went to Nate’s parents' house after church on Sunday for dinner. The kids were supposed to wear their costumes, but they had pretty much had their fill of dressing up by then. The girls put on their dresses, but we skipped the whole hair and makeup part. Abby was done being Yoda and decided to go as a cute little butterfly.