Halloween Happenings

The "spooky" festivities started Sunday night with our third annual spooky dinner.  I love that this is becoming a tradition and that the kids were almost (stress almost) as excited about it as trick or treating (I don't think anything I could come up with could compete with candy being handed to them).  This is the first time we've done it on a night other than Halloween and we found it works much better that way.  We were able to enjoy dinner and not rush through it.  

 We changed up the menu this year.  We did mummy dogs (turkey dogs rolled in crescent roll dough), eyeballs (peeled grapes), guts (chili) and brains (mac and cheese).  Not only were these fun foods, but all super kid friendly, so the three littlest members of our family were thrilled with all aspects of dinner.  I had to rummage through the refrigerator to find some less spooky foods for myself.

 This little guy wore his "Mommy's monster" jammies.  Appropriate for many different reasons.

Ten points to the former roommate who remembers where this banner came from and where we hung it.

After dinner, we carved our pumpkins.  Little Man wanted a scary pumpkin so he and Mike worked took on that task, while Kiwi opted for a happy face. I drew a face on the mini pumpkin Mason chose from the pumpkin patch.  Little Man was the only child really into this activity.  Kiwi did not enjoy touching the pumpkin guts and Mason wouldn't put his hand any where near the goo.  He did work up to touching the pumpkin on the outside and would proudly do that anytime anyone asked, "Where's the pumpkin?"

The kids were so excited to go trick or treating. They could hardly contain their excitement as they waited for Mike to get, were barely able to sit through dinner, and lost it when the doorbell started ringing as we were getting on their costumes.  I think it rang three times while we were getting ready and every time they would fly down the stairs tripping over their halfway put on costumes, because they could not bear to miss handing out candy. 

 Mason was not as fan of his costume until we opened the front door and he realized he would be able to go outside with it.  The whining stopped and he was off.

 It was a struggle to get him to sit still and try to get a picture.  He wasn't sure where he was going, but he was in a hurry to get there.

 Our two pirates (Little Man was a captain and Kiwi a pirate princess) and their little parrot.  It's such a sweet looking picture with their arms around each other, but in actuality both of the older kids are holding Mason back.

 And let the trick or treating begin!

 Mason enjoyed going up to the doors, but wasn't sure what to do after that.  People would smile and talk to him and him and he would just stare.  They would hand him candy and he would continue to stare.  They would wave bye bye (by this time Kiwi and Little Man were long gone from the porch and on their way to the next house) and I would usher Mason off the porch.  He usually started waving bye bye when we were halfway down the walkway and the door was closed.  I loved watching him take it all in.  All he really wanted to do was walk, so after a while we stopped having him go up to the houses and either Mike or I would just walk with him.  About halfway through Mike and Mason went back to our house to hand out candy while I took the big kids for a while longer.  Apparently, Mason whined the whole time we were gone because he wanted to be out, so when we got back we took him out to a couple more houses.

When we got back, there was the dumping of the buckets and going through the candy.  As I type this, Mason is napping and Kiwi and Little Man have been organizing their candies into families and Little Man is putting Kiwi to work having her organize them in groups of tens, fives, and twos so he can count them (any guesses to what's going on in first grade math?)

It was a good night.