Halloween is fun, easy, and not a lot of stress.  I love this holiday!  In years past we have dressed up as a group but lately I’m just letting the kids do what they want.  Sometimes boys just don’t have a lot of ideas, so I try to help.  I like to have costumes buttoned up well beforehand but this is Jake the night before Halloween trying to come up with a costume…What the heck is this!?  He’s a patient with multiple broken bones in a blue morph suit!?  Thank goodness he wasn’t happy with this and went with a bad boy criminal instead…

I hope this is not foreshadowing to Jake’s future years!  Drew was Dr. Ew (get it…DREW…aren’t we clever!?) the mad scientist.  He was taking it very literally with a ‘mad’ face!

We’ve been growing his hair out for weeks to come up with this awesome mad scientist hair do!!  He refused to wear a wig, so we did what we had to do and made this costume perfect!  The very next day we had a shiny new haircut.  All of that hair was driving him (and all of us really) nuts!Luckily we were light on sports practices this week so we had time to carve/decorate our pumpkins.  The kids came up with their own designs and did most of the cutting themselves.  Probably not the most wise idea, but we came out with no injuries!

Morgan always tries to take a more creative approach and melted crayons on hers…she’s calling it an ‘instagram fail’ but we thought it was still pretty cute!

The others were quite proud of their creations!

Jake did two designs on his.  The mouth is a “W” for winner (if you needed a little help figuring that out) and on the side….a star.Drew’s had the most giant mouth ever!Job well done guys!!Morgan’s school actually let the kids dress up in costumes for the whole school day…she and her friends were tourists…aren’t they cute!?and of course the famous elementary school parade of costumes.  It goes so fast that if you blink your eyes or get distracted for 2 seconds, you’ll miss your child.  Which is pretty much what happened to us with Drew…oops!Reece really wanted to be a unicorn but I am not a fan of just buying a costume off the rack so I pieced this together.  She was trying to look similar to ‘Star Lily’…remember her from Christmas 2 years ago!?  It was a ‘must have’ that Santa graciously fulfilled.

Here’s our real life Star Lily in the parade…

pretty good, right!?

Following the parade, I managed to scurry in between two class parties.  Drew thought his party was quite boring and wanted to come with me back to Reece’s 2nd grade classroom!  Oh no, is he already at the age where he’s too cool for classroom parties!?  I hope not!

After we made our way out of the school…It’s absolute madness trying to get out of that school with all the kids in costumes and parents running every which way.  The fact that we made it out of there in one piece is amazing.  I’m generally parked in the bus lane and the office is calling over the loud speaker to get the illegally parked cars moved immediately.  I’m certain the school is on to me by now.  I need to start showing up in a disguised vehicle!

When we get home we make our final preparations for our annual family Halloween party!!  It’s the best night!!

It’s a tradition to do a Halloween-themed food contest and I’m thrilled my kids love to participate.  This year I had a meeting with them in advance to explain that we do this for fun and if you don’t win a prize…it’s OK!  No pouting allowed on Halloween!  Is it sad that my kids are so stinkin’ competitive that I have to have a pre-party meeting!!??  I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember and I think I’ve only won once!  This is Reece’s first year to participate and she made these cute vampire donuts…

 

Here are the rest of our entries…they are so awesome!!

My dad is always complaining about the scoring system so he came up with three categories…most creative, best tasting, and most spooky.  Morgan was afraid he was trying to take over her job of the director of the contest but she and her friends still got to count the votes and I assured her that her director position was still hers!

and the winners were….

Emma (first time contestant) for best tasting

Edie & Scott for most creative

And Reece for most spooky

I’m throwing Jake in here for honorable mention because he worked so hard on this and look how great his cookie monster came out!!  All the cookies were gone in a flash by the way!

This year we were thrilled that Collin got to be with us all night…he’s the other unicorn.  What is it with unicorns this year!?  A popular costume choice!  Morgan changed out of her tourist outfit and was a ‘night unicorn’ named by Reece.  It didn’t come out quite as she had envisioned.  Somehow the glue for her blue fake eyelashes was causing her a lot of issues so she lost the lashes and went with the blue lipstick and facial stickers.Trick or treating was very cold!  We made it around our street and my hands were completely numb.  The little kiddos are mesmerized by the houses that have decorations outside and particularly fancy, spooky lights.  They will even bypass a house just to get to the lights!

The older kiddos made it through the neighborhood behind us and came in with pounds of candy.  Morgan handled handing out candy at our house and as usual we wished for more trick or treaters!  Apparently I need some of those fancy spooky lights to try to lure more in!

The kids are pretty good about sharing their candy with the adults.  My dad was doing a good job of protecting his stash.  Morgan hoped her siblings would share with her because she decided it was too cold to go out and get her own.  No worries MoMo, there is plenty to go around!  We had several bags leftover which we gave to Emma to take home to play candy poker with her family.  Sounds interesting doesn’t it!?  We might need to get that on the agenda for next year!  

And perfectly fitting that Reece would lose her 8th tooth on Halloween night!  She is definitely sporting that hillbilly grin just like Drew blessed us with the last few years.

Now I’m left with this disturbing amount of Halloween garb to put away….I swear it’s multiplying by the minute.  I have no idea how I get this shoved in two bins.  It doesn’t seem possible.  Perhaps I have a problem!?  Already Jake is mentioning that it’s sad that all the decorations are down, especially the lights.  I agree, Jakers, it’s sad.  Before we know it, we’ll be stringing Christmas lights and stressing about buying the perfect gifts for everyone.  Oh my, I better get my wine stash stocked up for that!

 

Happy Halloween!