Halloween 2014

(Still catching up to present time...)

 The boys love Halloween, Dallin especially. It's strange because he doesn't like to get scared, but he loves skeletons and zombies and Darth Vader and The Nightmare before Christmas. They were very happy when October rolled around and I let them get out our Halloween decorations. 

They got to decorate pumpkins with stickers--much easier than carving.

 The sticker kit we got was supposed to give you a few different "face" options for your pumpkin. Dallin and Connor went with Picasso pumpkins and put all the stickers on randomly.

Whatever makes them happy...

We went to a Halloween party at our friends' house. I took advantage of my pregnancy bump and dressed it up.

That's no moon.

 For our church Trunk or Treat, we did a family costume theme of "Plants vs. Zombies." (If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a video game.)

Dallin and Connor were Conehead zombies and Mckay was Crazy Dave. I, once again, dressed up my belly and went as a sunflower.

Halloween night was rainy with barely above freezing temperatures. We made our traditional homemade pizza and took found a little break in the rain to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood for a bit. We got cold pretty quickly and the rain started again, so we went to only a few houses and then came home.

The boys inspected their stash.

Connor drank some hot chocolate.

Then we passed out candy the rest of the night. Since there weren't many trick-or-treaters out due to the weather, we had a lot of leftover candy that we didn't give out. We might still have a lot of that candy 3 months later...

30 days of Graditude

It is now November, the month of Thanksgiving! I've made a goal to blog every day in the month of November about something I am grateful for. I've noticed how much happier I feel when I concentrate on things I have been blessed with, instead of things that I don't have.

Today, I am thankful for holidays. Yesterday was Halloween and we had a really fun holiday. It started with our ward Trunk or Treat on Wednesday. There was a costume parade around the gym.

This is the only picture of Mckay's costume that I managed to get. Any guesses?

He's a man on a windy day. See the newspaper stuck to his leg? And there was an inverted umbrella to go with the costume too. Pretty clever.

One of the cars in the Trunk-or-treat was decorated with a pirate theme with the people and dogs dressed at pirates. 

The kids got to dig in the sand for buried "treasure" with a number on it, and that told how many pieces of candy each child would get.

On Halloween day, Dallin had a "fall" party at preschool. To make it non-scary, they requested that everyone dress as a book character or an occupation. Dallin dressed up as Handyman.

He called himself "Handy Manny" from the Disney channel show.

I love his pose, with one foot up.

For dinner, we made homemade pizza. I usually make this once a week, but this time we made individual pizzas and I let the boys make their own.

Growing up, we often had mini english muffin pizzas and clam chowder on Halloween night. Others have remarked on that being a weird dinner combination, but it sounds perfectly normal to me! 

I turned on a Pandora Halloween station and we listened to spooky music while we made dinner. Connor was really good about putting the toppings on the pizza, but Dallin kept sneaking bites of olives and pepperoni. And cheese.

 After dinner, we got the boys dressed in costumes.

Dallin brought back the Mariachi player from Cinco de Mayo. Connor was Batman. I realize that it's not an accurate costume with the red cape and blue eye mask, but Connor liked it. He got these Batman pajamas for his birthday. He LOVES them and wants to wear them all the time, so we let it be his Halloween and costume and dressed it up with his cape and mask, also from his birthday.

 It was a wet, rainy day, but it managed let up for a few hours in the evening for trick or treating.

Connor loved splashing through the puddles as we walked from house to house. Both boys did really well and had a lot of fun. One of the last houses we stopped at had an animatronic skeleton/zombie guy with a motion sensor so it moved when you approached the house. The sensor wasn't working well so it didn't turn on to scare the boys. Good. But the middle aged woman passing out the candy thought it would be a good idea to activate the skeleton and show it to my very young children who already seemed apprehensive about it. (She may have been drunk...) All the skeleton did was lift his head and move an arm, but that was enough for both boys to clutch me in terror, and Connor screamed and cried. I carried him the next 20 houses til we got home. He managed to stop crying, but would still whimper every minute or so, "Skeleton...get....me..." I told him he could eat a few pieces of candy and that seemed to cheer him up.

This is their combined stash from trunk-or-treat, preschool party and Halloween night.

 They kept finding and opening more candy. In this picture, Connor has two suckers in his mouth at once. Later in the night he had three at once. 

Watching a Thomas the Tank Engine Halloween movie and eating candy: this boy is in heaven!

Even though I'm not a big Halloween person, I like the opportunity to do something different. Life can get kind of dull sometimes, so I like to have holidays and new seasons to get excited about. It's fun to decorate and plan out costumes. It makes a regular weekday meal more exciting. It gets me to loosen up and do fun things with my children. I'm glad that we have holidays.

Halloween 2012

The weekend before Halloween we had a ward Trunk or Treat at someone's house. There was a bonfire, a big open field where the cars were parked for trunk or treating, and a trail through the woods that the teenage boys turned into a spooky Haunted Trail for the night.

Dallin was a dinosaur this year, a repeat of last year's costume.

 Connor was a monkey, reprising Dallin's role from 2009 and 2010.

Connor was the perfect age for this costume. It fit well, and he is at the perfect "monkey stage," walking unsteadily through the grass, crawling around and getting into everything. 

He loved the dogs locked up behind a fence.

 You can't see in the picture, but they were big dogs with rough barks. They were very nice, good dogs, but I was surprised Connor was not afraid at all.

That's the end of the pictures from the trunk or treat. We were watching a friends child that night so we had 3 kids instead of the usual two. Mckay (being assistant scout master) was helping with the haunted trail, so I had all 3 kids on my own for a while. And Dallin was incredibly terrified of anyone wearing a mask that covered their eyes, so I was holding him, trying to calm him down most of the night. Taking pictures was the last thing on my mind.

Dallin has a buddy at church that often sits next to us. He's 11 and he helps Mckay keep Dallin and Connor sitting quietly while I play the organ. So, Dallin's friend showed up to the party wearing a morphsuit, one of those skin tight spandex suits that covers your entire body and face, like this:

Dallin was absolutely terrified of him!!!! Even when his friend took the face part off so Dallin could see who it was, he would scream again as soon as the mask went back. I'd try to take Dallin far away from him, but Dallin would search though the crowd to find him (trying to make sure he could see the evil monster so it wouldn't sneak up on him, I guess) and then scream and cry again. It was a rough night on the poor kid.

On Halloween, Dallin had a party in his preschool classroom, so he got to take his costume with him to school. He looked like a pack mule on his way out the door that morning.

Then we went trick or treating with some friends in their neighborhood. There was only one run in with a person wearing a scary mask, so Dallin handled the night well. He said "Thank you" and "bye-bye" at every door. Mckay dressed up to fit the theme of the boys' costumes. (And I did a little bit too.) Can you guess who he is?

Any ideas?

We start with a dinosaur, then we progress to a monkey.... he was Charles Darwin. He even brought a copy of the Origin of Species. And I was Darwin's wife. I know throwing on an apron doesn't really make you Darwin's wife, but it was the best "housewife" costume I could come up with in 2 minutes.

 We had a donut eating competition.

 I started out strong, but it is a lot harder than I expected to swallow while laying down.

When we got home from trick or treating, Connor was wiped out.

I love that he was holding a fork the whole time.

Dallin stayed up for another hour or so trying to eat every sucker in his bucket. This is the first year he's actually been interested in eating his candy, so we let him.

October Wrap-up

Here are the leftover pictures from the month:

This one kind of speaks for itself. Connor eating chips right out of the bag. Adorable.

(Yes, that is a blanket fort in the back of the picture.)

***

Since the weather has taken a turn for the cold, I pulled out the boys winter clothes in the next size. I found an outfit that I got at my baby shower for Dallin almost 4 years ago. It's 24 month size so he can just now fit in it.

 There are probably few 2 year olds that look cute in a one piece romper like this, and even fewer 3 1/2 year olds. But he finally fits in it!

***

Dallin will sometimes pass out on the floor after playing hard and Connor likes to torment him while he sleeps. Connor's weapon is a vacuum attachment.

***

Every time I pull laundry fresh from the dryer, Dallin climbs on top of the warm clothes.

***

We made the mistake of talking Connor for a "walk" around the neighborhood, actually letting him walk on his own instead of riding in the stroller. Now he has realized that there is no magical barrier around our yard and he has the power to leave it on his own.

Anytime we go out front, he takes off down the sidewalk.

 ***

Dallin helped me carve a pumpkin. I carved it and he put the cut out shapes back into place like a puzzle.

I love his eyes here:

And again with the eyes.

 Maybe he's trying to copy his pumpkin's triangle eyes.

Some "Halloween" fun

Some friends from church gave us a box of old clothes that their boys had grown out of but would fit Dallin soon. I went through the box to sort the clothes into sizes. In the box, I found a scary Halloween "scream" mask. So, I did what anyone would do with a scary mask in February: I hung it up by the front door so it would scare Mckay when he came home from school.

I was giggling with anticipation the entire day over my practical joke. This was gonna scare the pants off him! In the evening, when it was time for Mckay to get home, Dallin and I waited nearby so we could see every bit of Mckay's face as he walked through the door. We saw him coming through the window, he opened the front door, and...

Mckay was looking down, reading a book and did not even see the mask! After standing in the open doorway for a few seconds, finishing the line he was reading, he finally looked up, gave a casual glance at the mask and said, "What is this?" I said, "It was supposed to scare you." His reply: "But it's not Halloween. I wasn't expecting a mask." Exactly! That what getting scared means! You see something you weren't expecting and it startles you! In October, you're expecting scary decorations. When they suddenly appear in February, it should scare you! He just didn't get it...

Trick or Treat!

Our Halloween was really fun this year. It makes a big difference when your child is actually old enough to walk around and get candy. We went to a Trunk or Treat at church a few days before Halloween.

Dallin went as a dinosaur.

Connor's costume was "frightfully cute."

He stayed snuggled up in a sling while we trunk-or-treated.

Dallin was really excited to have a bucket to put things in.

He had a lot of fun putting rocks in there.

All lined up ready for candy!

He caught on to it pretty quickly. After the first few cars when he realized that people were giving him things to keep in his bucket, he got really excited!

He had no idea that it was candy (or even knew what candy was). They could have been giving him more rocks and he would have been just as happy. He was very polite and signed "Thank you" to everyone. He even tried to say it verbally a few times.

On Halloween Day, Connor was sporting this festive shirt:

Dallin had to jump in the picture.

Because any time the camera is out we must be taking a picture of him!

Mckay and I took Dallin around the neighborhood.

I think Dallin's favorite part about that was meeting about 40 new people and trying to walk into their houses.

And adding to his candy stash, of course.

He likes to dump his bucket on his lap and play in his candy pile, much like a child would play in a pile of leaves. Someday we'll get around to eating it.

Trunk or Treat

The three Lafayette wards had a Trunk-or-Treat for Halloween at the church. Dallin, of course, still fit into his monkey costume from last year. We came up with a different theme to go with his costume this time.

He was a monkey and we were zookeepers.

Apparently metal buckets and zookeeper hats are hard to find. (Thank you Hobby Lobby!)

The inside of our trunk has stuff in it, so we passed out candy next to the trunk.

There were a lot of kids and lots of creative costumes. Dallin doesn't understand trick or treating yet, but he did like taking candy from people and chewing on the wrappers.

All three of us.

When we got home we looked through the candy and let Dallin play with.

He was pretty excited about that.

He managed to unwrap a chocolate and melt it all over his hands.

And wouldn't you know it, with all the chocolately mess he made, he didn't eat any of it.