Halloween

It's been a fun Halloween season for us! Right on schedule, about 12 hours before the first Halloween party, everyone changed what they wanted their costumes to be. Luckily I was able to talk everyone back into the original plan; AJ was a cowboy, J was a dinosaur, & S was a vampire frog (more on that later)

The Trunk-or-Treat-chili-cook-off in the church parking lot started a little too early for us to get M home from work AND make it on time. But M was (much to his alarm) successfully transformed into a vampire in a matter of minutes. You see he HAD to be a vampire because S was, as stated before, a vampire frog, so she needed one parent to be a frog and the other to be a vampire to explain how there could even BE a vampire frog. M’s natural widow’s peak is awesome, so he got to be the vampire. He got home from work and said he was just going to go like he was and he’d be a modern Twilight kind of vampire. I said that was fine as long as I could make him sparkly and glittery and he'd wear amber colored contacts. In the end, he thought the classic version would be less embarrassing. The black hairspray and the blackened eye brows really threw everyone and they thought he was one of the missionaries! M outright refused to dress up again and the kids spent the whole evening trying to bribe him with their best candy to promise to dress up for Halloween night.

Tuesday I was making dinner when the kids and M went out on the back deck to carve the big pumpkins. (AJ calls them “plunkins”) When I came down to check on them M was chatting on the phone with his back turned and the 3 kids had the sharp implements and were doing all the carving themselves! While I was surprised at M’s choice to arm them, I’ve never liked carving pumpkins that much, so I’m relieved that they can do it themselves now. 

They wanted to paint mini pumpkins as well, and I'm always game for painting. I got a picture of J’s skeleton before he washed it off and traded for a different gourd which he made into a ghost. AJ’s mini plunkin was painted every color on his palette at once i.e. turned out brown. . .  a couple of times; then he washed it and tried again.  He was frustrated because he was trying to make it look like, in his own words, “Luke Skywalker with a blue light saber dressed up as a vampire.” Luckily S offered to help him and as you will see in the photos, was thrilled with the results. S picked a very bumpy gourd and painted a witch’s face, making each bump into a purple wart. On my mini pumpkin, I immortalized the great Halloween loves story of the dashing vampire who fell for an adorable frog. Hee hee hee.

We managed to get past Halloween without a huge deluge of candy. Mostly that was on account of my always running late. We got to the trunk-or-treat late and missed a lot of the people giving out candy. We got to the Museum of Geology party late. 

 The kids were on time to their class parties, but candy was kept in check there. And then on Halloween night we were late getting out trick-or-treating and only 3 or 4 houses still had candy on the 2 blocks we walked. 

 Alas, Marc never did get back in his Halloween costume.