The Halloween Post

Well, my friend Jared, just reminded me that it is NaBloPoMo, which means National Blog Posting Month and you're supposed to try to blog every single day for the month of November. I've already blown it since it's November 2nd. Since I've only got one post a month for the last 2 months, I'll just try to do better this month and get a few more in, but there's no way I'll get to it every day.

So, for the first one, we'll do the Halloween report:
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, might be second to Christmas. I love candy, I love dressing up, and I actually love spooky stuff (a little less now than I used to.) Now that I have kids, I also love seeing them get excited about their costumes, going pumpkin picking, and helping them eat their candy! (ok, I'm trying very hard this year not to raid their buckets and stick to our leftovers from only having 2 families come trick-or-treating to our door.)

We started the holiday off with the wARd trunk-or-treat. I just couldn't top my costume from last year (Sarah Palin - scariest AND funniest thing in October 2008.) Then, when David announced over the pulpit in sacrament that "we'll see if my wife can out-do her costume from last year," the pressure was just too much. I totally flopped and used someone else's idea to be a facebook page. It was kind of a cute idea, but Hattie wanted me to hold her all night because she was scared of everyone dressed up, so I had to take off the white board hanging around my neck. David, who seriously couldn't care less about Halloween, does not dress up unless I make him and I was too tired this year, so we were sans costumes.The KIDS though, were totally thrilled with their costumes. It was a squeaker to try to find what they wanted though. Grace wanted to be a tiger and Hattie wanted to be a pumpkin. Turns out that the costume companies make animal costumes for kids up through the 5T size and pumpkin costumes for babies up through the 2T size. Well, I needed a size 6 tiger and a size 4 pumpkin!! I finally found a size 4 pumpkin (definitely on the small side though) and Grace had to settle for a size 5 tiger and deal with it being a tad too small too. If I had the sewing skills and the time, I might have been able to solve the problem myself, but when Old Navy has totally nice costumes for $15, you just can't justify the $30 at the fabric store and the endless hours of sewing. Kudos to all those moms who make costumes every year!

Our town schools here don't celebrate the holidays. I can see not doing the religious holidays, but come on - Halloween?! So, poor Gracie did not get to wear a costume to school or have a school Halloween party. (They do a "pumpkin activity day" which means a pile of worksheets with a pumpkin theme and I think they got to weigh a pumpkin for math.) I let her wear her face painted like a tiger in protest though.

Hattie's pre-school did do a Halloween party. Oh, wait, excuse me, a "Fall Harvest Celebration." But, they did let the kids wear costumes and since her pre-school is part of a high school, the kids got to trick-or-treat through the offices of the high school. Her party was a total blast. I've never seen so many Halloween crafts! Our dining room table is covered with them now. (actually, now that I look at them, I guess Grace did do a couple of crafts at school too...) In the grand tradition of my children, Hattie was the only girl in her class not dressed up as some sort of princess. Hattie is even my daughter who LIKES princesses! Grace wouldn't be caught dead in a princess costume.

Halloween evening started out with some pumpkin carving. The kids drew their own designs on the pumpkins and I did all the knife work.

(Grace, the tiger, looking fierce with her "two faced" pumpkin)

Poor Daddy caught the flu either from the trunk-or-treat, or from church that weekend, so he was DOWN for Halloween. We left him to man the door which wasn't too hard considering a grand total of 7 kids/2 families. Don't worry - we didn't pass out swine flu with our candy. I made sure it was a sanitary situation.

I took the kids out. It was a nearly perfect evening with 70 degree weather and a spooky full moon with some wind that kept blowing wispy clouds in front of it. Our neighborhood scarcely has any kids at all. No one trick-or-treats around here, and very few turn on their lights to hand out candy. There are about 3-4 houses with older couples nearby who literally wait all night for our kids to show up and are so excited to see Grace and Hattie. Now that the kids are older though, I knew that going to 3 grandma houses wouldn't quite cut it. Grace's 2 best friends live in little cul-de-sacs nearby, so I told her that we could go visit them, take them a treat, and possibly do a few houses in their circles. I had no idea how perfectly my plan would work out! Grace's friend Corey and siblings had just headed out to the neighborhood when we pulled up. So, Grace and Hattie got to do the whole neighborhood with them.

(Haley, Corey, Brady, Grace, and Hattie)

Then, we headed over to Eamon's house quite a bit later, expecting to find that he was already done, but he had just headed out as well, so we caught up with him and did their whole neighborhood too!

(Eamon, Grace, and Hattie)

I would never have let the girls do so many houses in multiple neighborhoods if they were being greedy about "how much candy." But, they never once mentioned getting more candy, they just LOVED going with their friends. They wanted to do "more houses" because they just love running up to the porch and ringing the doorbell. It was seriously such a fun time to get to see the kids trick-or-treating with friends on a street filled with kids!

By the time we got back to our house and went to the grandma houses, they had almost given up on us and thought we weren't coming. I felt so bad - they had seriously prepared and waited for Grace and Hattie all night! Well, we WERE on the tail end of the town-announced Halloween holiday hours of 5-8pm.

(Grace and Hattie trick-or-treating at "Grandma" Jeanne's house. It's nice to have adopted grandparents when yours are more than 2000 miles away)

(walking down our dark empty road - I love Grace's tiger tail from behind)

Hattie was SO TIRED. She came home and immediately fell asleep on the couch in her costume.

Whew! Check off a successful Halloween! I think my kids are at the perfect age range right now to understand the holiday, for everything to be super fun (just a little bit scary), and not be too much work (like the hauling the baby around years.) I'm so looking forward to Christmas for the same reasons.