Halloween Roundup

Halloween is not my favorite holiday. The costume pressure just stresses me out. And Jordan would be perfectly happy totally ignoring the whole thing. He actually asked me last week how many more years I was going to expect him to dress up with the family ... um, all of them :) Because we have kids. And kids like holidays. So we better just suck it up and celebrate!

We did some fun things this year that I think will become tradition! And since I want to make sure I remember them, this will be a detailed post as this blog is basically my journal! So here goes ...

I didn't take any pictures of the food, but we had some festive meals today! This morning, we did pumpkin cinnamon rolls (don't get too excited - I just opened a can of cinnamon rolls and tinted the frosting orange!). For lunch, the girls had Jack O'Lantern quesadillas, monster pudding and ghost bananas. Jordan also got a Halloween-themed lunch ... I do themed lunches for him on all the holidays, and I'm not sure if it embarrasses him or not but oh well :) We had ghost pizza for dinner (English muffin pizzas topped with lots of mozzarella cheese and olive slices for eyes) and candy corn fruit cups (pineapple tidbits on bottom, mandarin oranges in the middle and whip cream on top). The missionaries also joined us for dinner at the last minute! We would've had monster hot chocolate when we got back from trick-or-treating, but both girls fell asleep in the car and went straight to bed. And it was like 70 degrees here still ... not exactly hot chocolate weather! Madison was excited about all of it and ate well, for once! McKinley eats everything anyway :)

Madison's Special Projects
Each day, I try to spend one-on-one time with Madison working on what she calls "special projects," anything from crafts to games to learning activities to kitchen creations. She loves this time, and so do I!! I decided to make all of our special projects this month Halloween related to help us all get excited for the holiday. Madison loved it! Since we don't really have any Halloween decorations (see the aforementioned lack of love for Halloween) and we definitely don't have money to buy any, several of our projects were decorations for the house! We'll definitely do these ones again next year!

I think this was my favorite project :) Although I had to replace the crepe paper several times because the humidity here made it grow like crazy!

Tree ghosts - a trash bag, some newspaper and a Sharpie :)

We hung three of them

Handprint bats

Cottonball ghosts

I think these turned out pretty cute too - just toilet paper rolls wrapped in crepe paper with googly eyes and smiley faces

Paper plate ghosts ... McKinley got ahold of one section of the toilet paper as I carried her from her room one day :)

We did this paper chain one day when what I had planned fell through. But it ended up being a good exercise in patterns for Madison

Spiders - styrofoam cups and pipe cleaners

Pumpkins
We are definitely not pumpkin carvers in this house. I think the guts are just gross and I feel like carving basically rules out my kids helping at all so we paint our pumpkins instead! I really like this tradition. The pumpkins still look super cute, and each of us gets to do one completely on our own however we want! Due to our crazy month, we didn't make it to one of the pumpkin farms this year and just picked out our pumpkins from a roadside stand on Saturday. They worked just as well :)

Hmmm, so many choices. Which one should I pick?

This is kinda heavy ...

I want this one!

McKinley's turn to pick

Pumpkins all in a row

This is seriously the best picture I got of them with their pumpkins. McKinley had already knocked hers over and a firetruck is driving by behind me, which is obviously much more interesting than I am

Pumpkin painting!

McKinley was MUCH more interested in painting herself than her pumpkin

Madison was adamant about painting the back of her pumpkin - "because I have a back and so does my pumpkin" 

Our finished pumpkins! Jordan thinks his turned out a little girly, I'm pretty happy with mine, Madison's got a little messy once she started adding every body part she can name onto it, and McKinley's is, well, McKinley's ;)

The Main Event
We got to go trick-or-treating twice this year, at our ward Halloween party and on Halloween night. I'm a fan of family costumes because it seems easier to come up with one creative idea than four. And I got this idea several months ago and have been pretty excited about it! When we had to go to Arizona unexpectedly, I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull it off, but I threw it together the day before the ward party, and I'm glad I did! So here you go ...

We want S'more!!

Madison insisted for a while that she wanted to be a witch, but I did some fast talking (and possibly some bribing) and convinced her to be a yummy piece of chocolate instead! Some people got it right away, but some not so much. Jordan and I had one person ask us if we were supposed to be measles patients and someone said that McKinley was the cutest pillow they'd ever seen. Like I'd actually dress my daughter as a pillow for Halloween! But I thought it was pretty cute! We had a lot of fun at our ward party and trunk-or-treat and then we had fun again trick-or-treating with the Walkers in their neighborhood on Halloween night!

Pillow, marshmallow, whatever, she's pretty cute!

Mmmmmm, candy!

 Hey, I bet Dad tasted good too!

You're next Mom!

We went to a little thing at the library before trick-or-treating, which was mostly lame, but Madison got her face painted. Love the McKinley photo bomb!

 She picked a butterfly

Seriously cute!

Ready to head out!!

We decided these two didn't really need anymore candy so they got to hang out in the stroller

The trick-or-treaters

Madison was having a great time until this house. There was a guy with a chainsaw standing on the lawn and the lady with the candy bowl had a weird mask on and was breathing really heavily, like a zombie or something. Madison was pretty freaked out and stuck close to us for a while!

Whew, that's it!! I'm glad Halloween is over and we can move on to better holidays. I may have mentioned setting up our Christmas tree soon, but we put our thankful tablecloth on the table tonight and are excited for Thanksgiving! Bring on the turkey crafts!