The Rest of Our Halloween Shenanagins

On Monday our joy school group had a Halloween party and everyone was invited. Gwen was so excited that she got to go to joy school with Miles! We did a few crafts and tracing pages and then we partied, complete with a spooky lunch! I'm so glad to have these other women to do joy school with! It's such a positive experience for us all.


Miles and Gwen wanted to stay in their costumes all day long so they could show dad when he got home. This picture is so typical. Dad gets home, he starts a fire, the kids tackle him to the ground for wrestle time. Not to mention the living room is always slightly, sometimes very, messy. Lately I feel like I can't keep the house clean for more than a few seconds, even though I'm working at it all day! What's up with that?


That night we carved pumpkins and watched a Halloween movie. The pumpkins we grew were some sort of super pumpkin or something because they were ridiculously hard to carve. So we kept it simple this year. The kids still thought it was awesome. Score!


That night Gwen got croup, so we stayed home from preschool and took it easy all day. I put some essential oils in the tub to help with the sickness, but Miles still didn't want to take a bath. So we decided to make it an orange bath for Halloween, and BAM, "Coolest idea ever mom! I can't wait to get in the tub." I love food coloring.


Both kids seemed to be on the mend the next day so we headed up to aunt Makenna's house for Halloween music time. I wish I would have gotten more pictures of all the fun things she had planned, but the only one I managed to snag was this cute one of Ethan and Mile snuggling on the couch. :)


We were busy the entire day of Halloween. We woke up and had orange pumpkin pancakes, got in our costumes and went to Dad's work to get a head start on our candy stash. We missed seeing his students, but said hello to all the wonderful people he works with and got some candy. These are my favorite pictures. I think this is my last year being able to persuade/dictate what the kids will be for Halloween, so I'm glad to have proof of another cutesy, matching year of costumes.


Then we headed to preschool. I know the kids probably did fun things in their classrooms, but I had to be focused on what was going on in mine. Holidays in the classroom are fun, but so ridiculously tiring. "Who's cinderella ring/spiderman mask/coat/jacket/piece of candy is this?" "I want my costume off/on/off" (a million times) "I have to go potty!" (says the kids in a 100 button, one piece costume). Whew. I was so beat. At least I got to wear my pajamas all day! I remembered the night before that because I'm ta teacher, I was supposed to dress up. I had wanted to order one of those cute skeleton with a baby in their tummy costumes off of Etsy or make my own with a stencil or something, but I never got around to it. And then at like 9pm wandering around walmart for last minute stuff, I found white duct tape and figured it would do the trick.



After school we came home, touched up our costumes, lit our pumpkins, set out a bowl of candy, and finally trick-or-treated on our street. They were in heaven! I wish we would have gone to more houses! But we were getting together for dinner and games at the Garners and didn't want to hold things up so we got in the van. The kids had fun playing with each other and utilizing (at least a little) the bean bag toss and felt monsters I made. They have boxes of old dress up stuff, so when Gwen got tired of being Minnie Mouse, she dressed up as all sorts of things. It's kind of her favorite.


Both kids cried when they realized that Halloween was over. They felt much better about it though when I let them count all their candy the next morning at breakfast and have a piece. A few days later it snowed! I'm so glad it waited until after Halloween was over. Nothing is sticking yet, but it's definitely colder. Miles came into our room on Sunday and shouted, "It's snowing!! It's Christmas and my birthday!!" He couldn't wait to get his snow gear on and take his shovel outside to shovel the snow into a big pile. We got them all decked out, sent them outside, and then they realized there was hardly any snow. Gwen got sick of it fast, but Miles stood at the ready, waiting for more snow to come down so he could shovel it. He's our little Idaho boy. :)