When we talked with the kids about what they wanted to be for Halloween at the beginning of October, I encouraged them to look at costumes and supplies we already had to reduce the crazy amount of money that can be dumped into costumes that are poorly made and rarely get enough use. Early on the plan was the costumes would go something like this ... Becca - Princess or queen; Emily - Cheetah; Sam - Superman; Alex - Pumpkin; Anna - Pumpkin. Our cheetah costume was defiantly too small for Emily, so I found a cute velor "sweat" suit $9/piece in cheetah print for her to wear, and found a great classic Superman costume on eBay for $15 (including shipping).
When everyone changed into their costumes, Sam decided to wear his Buz Lightyear costume from 2 years ago; Becca had her heart set on being a vampire (what?! - it must be an 8 year old thing Kris and Renee?) wearing her witch costume and a quickly pinned and taped "grim reaper" cape of GR's; and we all felt with Alex's Diego obsession, that he really should be Diego - even though GR was going to keep him home with him to pass out candy instead of having him go around with the big kids.
They all looked super cute even with the last minute changes! And FYI - if you don't have face paint, washable markers work really well for painting on animal faces and fake blood.
Our friends the L's called Thursday night when their plans fell through, to see if they could trick-or-treat with us, and I'm so glad they did. The kids had a great time together, and I was grateful for some company! The weather was amazing, perfect for being outside. A mixed blessing. The sidewalks were full of kids and parents, but it kept the car traffic through the neighborhood to a minimum which was nice. On cold Halloweens, you can't get in or out of our neighborhood between 6 and 9 because the streets are packed with cars three across. The kids got great candy ... very little that they don't like or that I call "junk candy" and automatically throw out.
GR and Alex between the hours of 6:30 and 8 when the big kids got back in and we turned off all the lights, handed out ~200 pieces of candy. He did his best to limit it to 1 per, but wow that's a lot of candy!
A couple of weeks ago Emily's teacher emailed me to see if I would head up the festivities for their classroom Fall Party. The 1st and 2nd graders were going to do one big combined party with a different activity happening in each classroom. They've been working on measuring lately and wanted as many of the activities to involve types of measuring. Since there are three 1st grades, and three 2nd grades, the teachers came up with six different activities and needed lots of parent helpers to pull it off.
1. Measure pumpkins
2. Weigh pumpkins
3. Make a trail mix
4. Craft - Make a pumpkin with strips of construction paper
5. Leaf Rubbings
6. Decorate Cookies
Any guesses on the room they wanted me to head up? ... 6. Decorate cookies ... here's where the project got tricky ... they want the kids to measure out all the decorating ingredients, there are 140 students AND it needs to fill 20 minutes.
Lots of thinking, lots of calculating, lots of conversations with GR and my Mom about how to make this doable without turning my kitchen into a massive bakery. We realized that with 20 minutes to fill, one cookie per child wasn't going to be enough, really we needed 3 cookies each, which meant 420 cookies and this is where my mind started to whirl uncontrollably!
My mom convinced me to give a local grocery store bakery a call to see if they could donate or cut us a really good deal on sugar cookies and frosting. They ended up selling me 420 cookies (with at least 40 extras) for $.20/cookie and donating a large 26lb bucket of orange frosting. This was such a huge help! We asked the parents to send in $.60/child to cover the cost of the cookies and we were able to collect more than enough to cover the cost of the cookies! Parents were also asked to help supply the other things we'd need for the party ... for my room we needed:
17 - 3.25 oz. containers of Halloween themed candied mixed sprinkles. ... 1 teaspoon/cookie($1 @ Target in dollar bins. $1.88 @ Walmart in Halloween candy isle.)
6 - 1lb 8 oz. bags of candy corns ($1.68 @ Walmart) ... 15/child
5 - 24 oz. bags of pumpkins ($1.68 @ Walmart) ... 3/child
4 - 11 oz. bags of chocolate chips ... 1/2 tablespoon / child
4 - 14 oz. bags of plain milk chocolate M&Ms ... 1 tablespoon / child
I got lots of parent helpers, GR decided to have a touch of the stomach flu (wink, wink) and stayed home with Alex, Anna was a dream, and the 1st and 2nd graders had a great time with their 2.5 hour long party!
I think I mentioned last year that Rebecca's 2nd grade Halloween party was pretty pathetic ... so pathetic that she was in tears at the end of the day. Emily had had uproarious fun - tons of games, loads of treats, the works - and she, she got a small bag of trail mix and half a cookie. After that I promised her it wouldn't happen again. And I did all I could to help make the rest of her parties that year fun. It's looking like I'll have to keep that promise until she graduates.
After two notices home to parents looking for Fall party helpers, with no takers, I sent a note saying I was already committed in the 1st/2nd grade pods, but would be willing to organize the party. I tried to follow Alyson's magic formula for a successful party ... having violated more rules on her list when organizing past parties than I care to publicly admit, I followed it in every aspect, in hopes that I could pull off a successful party that would compete with Emily's 2.5 hours of fun.
I got a couple of Mom's to help by providing drink pouches, trail mix, and sugar cookies. In place of apples, I sent a cooler with green and orange Jell-O cups that had two creepy spider rings floating in each cup. They played the Halloween pairing game (suggested by Alyson), ate their snacks and went home. I was able to pop into Becca's room at the very end, and everyone seemed happy and like they'd been kept busy.
We've had a week of Halloween and soccer fun all rolled into one very short, very full week! I'll start with pumpkin carving, then highlight the kids fall parties and then trick-or-treating!
Last Saturday (October 25th) the kids each played their last soccer game of the season, and everyone's had a little party of some kind to celebrate the season over the last week. We've eaten lots of pizza this week and my dishwasher has greatly appreciated the week off!
After our marathon morning of soccer on the 25th, we headed out to Bob and Diane's for our pumpkin carving party. This year, we invited our entire ward and a few friends to join in the fun. In all, about 50 people came out and enjoyed an evening of amazing weather and fall family time fun!
We went through 5 big crock pots of chili, and I thought I'd share the recipe I use. It's a good basic chili that seems to go over well with kids and adults, and is easy to make in large quantities when needed since you really only need a good big pot and reliable can opener.
Kid Friendly & Adult Filling Chili
3 cups browned ground beef (a little more than 1lb.) that was seasoned with onion
1 envelope McCormick's chili seasoning
3 cans petite diced tomatoes (undrained)
2 cans seasoned chili beans (undrained)
2 cans dark red kidney beans (slightly drained)
Dump in large pot and heat through. Serve with shredded cheese, sour cream, hot dogs, dice onion or any of your favorite chili toppings. Makes ~13, 1 cup servings.
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Monday and Tuesday evenings were spent at Triple R Ranch ... aka Rachel and RJ's ... sharing good food, lots of laughs, and letting our kids (and us adults too!) get in some good, long overdue playing time together. We just found out they are expecting number five in March and it's a boy! This is five for five with our two families ... we're girl, girl, boy, boy, girl, and they are boy, boy, girl, girl, boy. RJ was joking we could marry them all off within the two families in one day and call it good ... what are the odds of that happening?
Here's a picture of all of us carving away at our pumpkins Tuesday night. Add these to the ones we worked on Saturday, and we should have a good little line of jack-o-lanterns lighting the path to the front door for trick-or-treaters.
My sweet boys before church. 
I took the picture for the express reason of documenting for Samuel what he looks like when his Mama does not fight him on all his clothing choices for the day. Before his bath, he told me he was going to wear his suit - hallelujah! Only this is what he put on ... his black suit coat, yellow and blue striped shirt with red and blue striped tie, blue corduroy pants, white socks and brown plaid deck shoes.
As for Alex ... not one of his better Sacrament meetings. One of those meetings where I walked out three or four times ... the last time I walked back into the meeting, well let's just say I wish I hadn't ... why oh why, does my row not have a trap door in the floor, where I and my wiggly, loud, amazingly cute little monster can disappear into
before anyone notices who's making all the commotion?!
