This year for Halloween I was able to get, make or use all the kids costumes for practically free. They all looked so cute, and the weather this year was perfect!
Lily was a bat. My mother-in-law gave us some black fabric and with a little creativity (and the sewing skills of my cousin, Shelley) I was able to make these cute bat wings for Lily. They were so easy and she just wore some old cat ears and black clothes to complete the costume.
Jefferson wanted to be Harry Potter. I bought some crazy eyes and just popped out the eyes for his glasses and some black hair spray to color his hair. The costume was a little tricker to come by, but thanks to a Facebook friend I was able to borrow a great costume. It was way too big on Jeff, so we hemmed it up about a foot and a half. He looked great!
Cedric was going to be a ghost. In fact, for weeks that's all he talked about. But days before Halloween he was playing dress-up and put on Jeff's old skeleton costume. When I saw how good it fit him, we switched costumes and he went as a skeleton.
A few weeks before Halloween I took the kids to the pumpkin patch. We went here last year and they loved it. The weather was so nice they were in T-shirts!
We also met up with my cousin, Shelley and her two boys. Here's Cedric and Parker, they get a long so well together despite being two years apart in age.
And here's Jeff and Carson. They both enjoyed pushing the wheelbarrow around and looking for pumpkins.
We also enjoyed looking at the old tractors...
Hunting for pumpkins...
And going through the corn maze.
Then the weekend of UEA we took Lily's friend, Sammy and went with my friend, Dana and her kids Avery, Ian & Matthew to Gardner Village to do the witch hunt. Again it was a beautiful day (and as you can tell, sunny), but it was very crowded. We had a good time though and it was nice to take advantage of the warm weather.
The next Halloween event was Tom's work party the Friday before Halloween. Every year they invite the families down to do games and a little trick-or-treating around the offices.
It was a fun afternoon, but my poor Harry Potter was all tuckered out.
We left him in the car to sleep as we were getting ready to head out to the ward Trunk-or-Treat shortly afterwards. Unfortunately we were about a half hour late because the soup I was bringing took longer to warm up than I thought. As we showed up at the church they were just finishing the trunk-or-treat. We still enjoyed a good dinner (at least Tom, Cedric and I did) inside and the kids had fun playing more Halloween games. It was fun, long day.
We were going to do some more free trick-or-treating Saturday night at the Olympic Oval, but Tom and I didn't want to go through the hassle of getting costumes and such on again. So instead we went as a family to the dollar theater to see Cars 2.
Then Halloween day arrived. I volunteered to help with the party in Lily's class and Cedric was a good boy to help too. He actually did really well to just sit by Lily, me or play the Ipod while I helped.
We played a game called "Witches Brew". Here's Lily as the "it" in the circle.
The kids also did a doughnut eating contest.
Cedric had a go at it too.
The kids also made
Q-tip skeletons while they ate all their goodies.
Then Cedric and I headed to the gym for the parade. By this point Cedric was pretty tuckered out and didn't even want to wear his costume anymore. He reminded me of Elliot from E.T. with his long-johns and face paint. Here he is laying on the chair feeling my sleeve and sucking his tongue (this is what he does when he's tired).
Then the parade started. I was excited when the costume winners of each class started the parade and Jeff was one of them! Each class voted on the costume they liked best. Lily was actually second runner-up in her class, and Jeff was the winner for his class. He got to wear a special sign, got a certificate and a prize for it. Unfortunately, because he was in the front of the parade and the kids were going so fast, this was the best picture I could get of him.
In fact, the kids went so fast that the whole parade was over in about ten minutes. Since there was still a half hour of school left, Cedric and I just went outside to the playground until the bell rang. After school I was able to get a much better picture of Jeff with his big "thumbs-up".
We meant to carve pumpkins Sunday, but didn't get to it, so we had to do it on Halloween day. I tried to clean out all the pumpkins before I had to go help at the school, but only made it through two of them. So while the kids did homework and stuff after school I finished cleaning them all out. The kids had made drawings a few days before of what they wanted their pumpkins to look like, and then watched me as I carved them. I felt like they turned out pretty well.
Jeff's was a basic pumpkin face.
Lily wanted to make her's into a princess.
And Cedric's we turned into Frankenstein. I also made the little one into a witch.
We finished them just in time for the trick-or-treaters to see.
It was Tom's year to take them out trick-or-treating, which I was glad about. It had been a tiring day and even just walking to the door several times to pass out candy wore me out. The kids only made it about half way around the neighborhood, so I had to go pick them up. But they ended up with a lot of candy. The first thing Cedric did when we got back was dump out his bucket. (Tom was still out with the other two, but closer to home.)
It was a fun Halloween, but I'm happy to wait a year until the next one.
