Halloween Festivities 2018

Halloween Season has become almost as busy as Christmas Season for us.  We kicked it off by finding a pumpkin to adorn our front porch. Luke chose this one that was for sale in the front yard of a home in Orem.

The next big thing was a trip to the pumpkin patch.  We went to one in Pleasant Grove this year and had a great time.  The weather was sunny and warm and the kids loved all the activities.  There were huge slides, a 55-gallon drum train, a hay ride to a corn maze, a petting zoo area, large corrugated pipe pieces you could stand up in and race, and more that we didn't do.  We grabbed (bought) a couple more pumpkins on our way out.

Cat had some friends over to hang out.  Ben was out of town so we needed to come up with things the teenagers and the younger kids could all enjoy.  We decided to make Halloween sugar cookies for everyone to decorate.  I had already made and frozen the dough, so Cat cut and baked the cookies and we got everything out for the decorating.  The younger kids were more interested in watching "Hotel Transylvania 3" and didn't participate in the cookie fun, which was good, since Cat and her friends ended up with really crazy cookies, even using the snacking-Doritos as decorations for the cookies.  Remind me to buy a roll of sugar cookie dough next time we want to do this with teenagers.  But they had a great time, and that's what matters.

At the younger kids' school, the kids were told to wear their costumes to school the Friday before Halloween and parents came to watch the costume parade.  I never got good pictures of the kids in their costumes so here's the best I have!  (I hope you'll forgive me for my lack of documenting their costumes this year when I tell you that both Jack and Eliza wore multiple costumes to the various Halloween activities during the month.)  The classes also had their parties on this day, and I helped Jack's class with their party.  The classroom has a Harry Potter theme so we went with a HP theme for the party too.  I was supposed to plan a game/activity and at first thought I'd scour Pinterest for fun and cool things to do but then it dawned on me that I could keep it really simple with Pictionary.  So I wrote down a bunch of HP terms on slips of paper and had the teams compete against each other and the kids LOVED it.  It was a good reminder that sometimes (more often than not, really) simple really is the way to go.

The next day we all went to the Pumpkin Walk, an activity we attend most Octobers.  First was the traditional Puking Pumpkins show, then very hygenic but not very difficult bobbing for apples, checking out the cool pumpkins and watching a professional pumpkin carver, and hanging out with cool animals, including a tortoise and a hare, a hedgehog, a skunk, and a boa constrictor (last two not pictured).  The weather was warm and sunny and we soaked it in as much as we could.  That night we made jack-o-lantern pizzas and watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."

The next day was the Sunday before Halloween and finally time to carve our pumpkins.  The kids are becoming more and more independent with this, which is great.  Eliza even wanted to shave off the outer layer of her pumpkin.  They all turned out really well, and I was excited to have pumpkin seeds to roast.

The day before Halloween the kids helped me prep our decorations for our ward Trunk-or-Treat, and I was pleased with the way it turned out.  The party was fun (though I'll never understand how it makes sense to get kids dressed up in costumes then tell them to eat chili, one of the messiest and most staining foods out there.  Whatever happened to bread and water?) and there were lots of cars to trunk-or-treat to and many of them had fun decorations.

Halloween was treated like a normal school day (except that the teachers didn't give homework - thank goodness) but I tried to make it fun anyway.  I put these little Rice Krispies Treats jack-o-lanterns in their lunches and made jack-o-lantern pancakes in the morning.  Luke also showed his Halloween spirit by wearing an orange belt to school.  (Thank you, Whit!)

I picked the kids up from school and we went home to change into costumes before going to Ben's office for his work Halloween party.  It was so cool!  They had tons of decorations and activities.  There was a room set up with a video of the Thriller dance so you could dance along; there was a room of haunted gingerbread house decorating; there was a haunted room (which Jack wisely decided not to enter); there was a carnival area with a photo station and lots of games, and more.  And so much candy.  We even tried to convince the kids that they didn't need to trick-or-treat since they'd gotten so much candy at the party.  Most of them weren't interested.  (Though Jack would have preferred to stay home than go out trick-or-treating because he thought it was too scary.)

We got home and Cat grabbed something to eat while I got the mummy dogs in the oven.  Then we took her to her friend's house to trick-or-treat there and I brought the younger kids home for dinner.  Jack didn't want to go out trick-or-treating but Eliza was anxious to get going so she ended up leaving with a neighbor while Jack tried to keep things interesting for our trick-or-treaters by making them catch their candy, or by throwing it up in the air as he ran away from the poor kids and making them find the candy in the grass.  Eventually we convinced him to toss the candy into the buckets.  And after some debate about who would go out trick-or-treating, Ben and I made the executive decision to take both boys out, and they both had a really good time.  We ended up running into Eliza and our neighbor pretty quickly so we all ended up walking around together, which was great.

  

And to wrap up this very long post, I give you Eliza's Halloween craft projects from school and Actvity Days.