Halloween

The day of Halloween was pretty busy.  First off I had preschool.  The kids wore their costumes and then we had a parade at pick up.  I just love my preschoolers!

Then I went to the school for my kid's parties.  Since I have 4 in elementary school I didn't commit to help at any party.  I just spent about 15 minutes in each classroom.  It worked out great becasue I just got to hang with my kids AND got 4 different cupcakes!

Then they had their Halloween parade.

For trick or treating we went down to Jen's house and took a neighborhood group photo.   All these kids live with on our street with-in about a 6 house radius - our neighborhood ROCKS!!

My cute kids. 

The Harry Potter clan.  Can you even stand Megan's pose!?  She did that ALL on her own.

Noah and his best friend, David.

Noah was Harry Potter.  He loved reading the books and watching the movies.  Like I mentioned earlier, we read the first 3 as a family and then after that they have to be in 4th grade and read it on their own.  Noah has now read the 4th book and is on the 5th.

Once Noah said he wanted to be Harry, Megan quickly decided she wanted to be Hermione.  This ws really sweet to watch.  Megan and Noah don't typically get along - but they were really sweet with each other this Halloween since they were in matching costumes - I think it was great for their friendship - AND SHE IS KILLING ME WITH HER POSES!

As mentioned before, we still didn't have a job around Halloween and the thought of the cost of costumes was giving me some anxiety.  I hate Halloween to begin with (I am NOT crafty to make costumes) and the added stress of trying to do it cheaply was really getting to me.  I had a chat with the kids about it and I tried to convince them to pick something out of what we had from previous years (or in dress ups).  Madison decided she wanted to be the same thing as last year.  I, of course, didn't want them to feel "slided" or sad about it - so I double (and triple) checked and she was really happy to be a witch again.  Last year we borrowed a purple wig from our friend, the birch's, but they had given it away, so this year we borrowed a green wig from the Marriott's.  She also wanted to carry around a wand, a book of magic spells, and a broom.  She wanted to carry all of those things while trick or treating, along with her pillow case.  It lasted about 5 houses (more than I thought) - before she reluctantly gave me all of her accessories.

Brock went back and forth about what he wanted to be (like most years)  In the end he wanted to be a detective.  This costume gave me the most trouble.  It took me hours and hours of looking for that dang trench coat - but in the end (in the final hours) I found it at the 4th Good Will I sent to.  He was happy - Woo Hoo!

The Harry Potter costumes were borrowed from my friend, Heather.  I put a request out on our Ward Facebook page for some help with Halloween costumes and EVERYONE offered up what they had to help dress my kids.  I am so grateful with all of the help we have gotten over these past few months.

We all started out as a big group trick or treating, but that is not sustainable.  In the end Brock went off with a group of boys.  Noah went with David and his dad. And me the girls went (but just right behind Noah).  Megan and Noah gave up after about an hour and a half, then I took Brock, Lincoln, and Madison to another neighborhood where they went another hour.  Then Madison kept going for another half hour!  She was our winner and was done trick or treating about 8:30.  Now we have more candy than you can even imagine.  What we have decided to do is let them pick 20 pieces of candy every Sunday and they can eat them when ever and how ever they want.  With a few rules though: 1 - you can't steel other peoples candy once you eat all of  yours.  2 - you MUST throw away your wrappers (found wrappers will result in one lost piece of candy).  3 - you have to eat breakfast before you eat candy.  And 4 - no candy after brushing teeth at night.