A Happy Halloween!

Halloween always seems to be a bit of a crapshoot around our house.  Between costume drama, sugar, classroom activities, weather, and whatever else, someone is always bound to be in a mood.  It's a busy day for everyone, and inevitably it goes awry somewhere along the way.  But you know, this one actually turned out pretty good!

We got the kids' costumes handled in a busy couple days the prior week, but I was panicking leading up to Wednesday because I didn't have a costume for work (and this year I really wanted to since I didn't last year).  We also got the pumpkins last minute over the weekend, which left minimal time for carving considering Jacob had lacrosse practice two nights in a row and I had many errands to run.  But finally, later Tuesday night, we had these! 

Note that the big one has ears!

Carter actually took some interest in carving for a change.  He helped me sort seeds a bit and gave me artistic direction for the little one.  Jacob almost seemed interested in the big guy, but aside from saying he wanted a classic face (though apparently this wasn't classic enough), he skipped out.  Sigh.  But they got done and I now have hundreds of seeds to roast.  Time to experiment, I guess!

My costume also came down to the wire.  I dragged Carter all over the place on Monday trying to figure out an easy costume to go with the "garden" theme at work (as we work in the "Garden Suite", a.k.a. the ground floor).  I entertained thoughts of a bee or a butterfly, or maybe a flower or flower pot.  But with our busy weekend and so much other stuff going on, nothing of substance was going to happen.  I ran out at lunch on Tuesday for a last-ditch effort at Target and found a pair of flowy monarch butterfly wings for $10.  SOLD.

That night I sat down with an old headband and dug through my bounty of random craft supplies.  Many are leftovers from my own projects, but a bunch is stuff that I pulled off of Jacob's and Carter's daycare craft projects after photographing them and prior to tossing them.  I kept anything salvageable--buttons, plastic shapes, foam shapes, pipe cleaners, beads, googly eyes--just in case we needed random stuff for a project.  I dug out an orange pipe cleaner that I cut in half, and instead of the pom poms I expected to use, I found two black foam circles, almost like mini hockey pucks, that I had salvaged off of one of Jacob's projects.  I was able to just stick the pipe cleaners in to them, no glue needed, and voila, antennae!

I simply dressed in all black, and the end result was this:

And here was my little addition to the garden décor...

The trellis came from a Mother's Day gift basket from Craig's team owners, and my little Rocky fits the garden theme, too.  I couldn't resist sticking the pumpkin on his arm!

We had a fun day at work, from morning donuts to touring all of the different departments' themes, then enjoying a creepy dessert buffet and the kids' trick-or-treating parade in the afternoon.  Too much food, but it was a lot of fun.  I came home in the rain, picked up pizza for dinner, and then got the pumpkins out and the kids fed and ready for trick-or-treating.  It was pouring by then, but we had to get ready!  But first...pictures!

Both of these cracked me up so much that I had to include both...

This is my favorite, though!

I had to catch a picture of Carter's inflatable pack that was almost as big as him!

It stopped raining just as we headed out, and it turned into a fabulous evening.  It was actually about 10 degrees warmer than most nights (or even days) lately, in the mid 50s.  We worked our way around the neighborhood, heading to the next street over, toward a couple fun houses we went to last year and another one I heard about via a thread on Facebook.  The kids made out like bandits at the first few houses, I think because there weren't many kids around then and people were having them take handfuls!  I was amused by the things people said to the kids, and we had a blast just walking together...probably because the boys were getting along!  We finally got to the first cool house that was a favorite last year.  It was equally awesome this year.

The man who answered the door is older, and it amazed us to think he did all of this!

As we walked down the street, we saw the coolest thing I have ever seen during trick or treating.  There was a golf cart, all lit up with lights.  It had four older women on board, maybe in their 60s.  They were all wearing glow stick glasses and other accessories.  I'm pretty sure a couple were partaking of a beverage, and one was holding a bucket of candy.  Instead of having the kids come to them at home, they brought the candy to the kids!  It was hilarious and they looked like they were having such a blast!  Definitely on my old lady bucket list now!

The Facebook one that was further down the street had all the bells and whistles, but it also had a "For Sale" sign in the front yard!  Boo, indeed.  As we walked toward our street, we noticed another good house just past our turn, so we headed there.  By this point Carter was getting tired and his pumpkin was almost full, so we knew we were winding down.  But this house looked too cool to skip.  And sure enough, it was impressive.  The whole front yard was decorated, but more impressive was the entire garage full of stuff!

There was an elderly woman standing inside the front door of this house pointing at the bucket next to the door with candy.  I noticed it was sitting on what appeared to be a dummy, but of course when Carter went to get candy it became clear it was not a dummy!  It moved, and he was totally thrown off by it and was eager to leave.  As he pushed into me to leave, I bumped into someone standing directly behind me.  Creepily, it was a guy in the scariest mask--a guy we had seen wandering alone on the sidewalk down the street earlier.  The kids wondered then why he was there, seemingly watching us, and that only intensified once he was standing right behind me.  They asked why he was following us!  I'll admit it even creeped me out, but then I noticed there were a few other random masked wanderers in the driveway and I think it was all a part of a very elaborate (if misguided) act.  Even still, we didn't waste much time getting back on the walk home.  By then Carter really had to pee, so we managed that (thanks to a bush), had one more odd encounter with a talkative teenager, and both boys hit up a few more houses (Jacob more than Carter) before heading home for the night.  We had a really great time!  Craig, on the other hand, had very little action at home--only 12 kids!  Our street is terrible now!

When we got home and settled, the boys were eager to survey their loot!

Before the night was over, I had to snap a picture of my full costume, mostly because I knew my mom wanted to see it and I figured my previous picture wasn't sufficient.  And I really like those wings!

All in all, it was a great holiday.  Last year was a bust as work was stressful and it was the day after my cousin's young son passed away in a terrible accident.  It was not a good day, as I was in shock and definitely not feeling festive, so it was nice to get back to a good time this year (even if I was remaining prayerful for my cousin's family in the process).  Next year I need to get working on Halloween sooner, mostly because Jacob has hit his limit on what the Halloween store offers.  Everything is either too young, too weird, or too creepy, so we need to find a good Pinterest project to get him costumed for next year.  Good thing we have 360+ days to figure it out!

Now it's November and it's on to the next big thing.  Jacob's lacrosse season is getting started, Craig's season will be starting soon, we have a trip to Toronto in the works, and Thanksgiving is less than three weeks away.  And we all know what comes after that!  Here we go...