Halloween Craziness

So I've been meaning to post our Halloween pictures for the last few days, OK lots of days, but life has a way of happening so quickly we can't keep up with our good intentions.

To tell the truth I've been asked to speak on Sunday so I've been spending more time studying talks and scriptures, I've been to the temple this week and I've been working on Relief Society stuff. So I have a good excuse for not getting here sooner:)


On Friday I went into Ashley's class to help with her class party. I had an idea to do a craft and then have the kids go bobbing for apples. Another mom was going to bring cupcakes, and they would have drinks and a take home treat and be done. Pretty simple and all approved by the teacher.



Well Ashley freaked out when I told her that we were bobbing for apples. "I will only do it if we all have our own buckets!" Hmmm that sounded like a logistical nightmare. "It's OK" I said, remembering back when I used to bob for apples as a child. "That's gross!" she said "I'm not doing it!"

When I mentioned my idea to one of the other moms in the class she said "Aren't you worried about H1N1 germs???" OK, OK I nixed that idea.

We used the "reacher/grabber thing" we got from an LPA convention to let the kids do apple fishing instead. (Then I used the same idea to let the trick or treaters at trunk or treat "grab" their own candy) No faces or hands even were involved in apple retrieval, though we did have to wash grass off of a couple of them.



The party was interesting with double and triple items donated from parents that didn't contact me including pizza for the entire class. Don't get me wrong I was glad for the parental support but it made for a lot of thrown away food, especially since it was right after lunch. And, how do you think apple slices compare to pizza, double cupcakes and treat bags? Hmmmmm...not very well, even with the caramel sauce. Let's just say there was a lot of apple slices in the trash that day. Maybe not one of my best ideas.



I was grateful for the parents help though since the teacher used the party for one-on-one student instruction time and typing on the computer. She didn't interact with us parents and didn't participate in the party. I got the sense that she wasn't really happy with the pizza. I told her that I didn't know that it was coming. "Well, it turned out OK in the end. I guess." I asked her if we were supposed to get pizza approved. She never answered my question but said it was probably Ok because they all had already eaten lunch. She's really hard to read sometimes.

That night we got to go to Steve and Tahna's and watch Josh open his mission call. He was going to the Baltimore Maryland mission! We were so excited for him.

Of course on the way over we had to use our print out coupon from Oprah for Payless Shoes. Such a sweet deal. Taylor was at a Halloween party that night so he didn't get any shoes but that's OK because he doesn't care about shoes anyways.

Taylor was invited over by the Nelson's to go to Castle Dark and then go over to their house for a Halloween party. He knew he had to have a costume but it was like pulling teeth to get him to come up with what he wanted to be. I finally said "Just be Goofy like you were last year". He refused for awhile but then the day before the party he agreed to be goofy if he didn't have to wear the shirt he wore last year (becuase it was mine). I promised him he wouldn't have to. He rejected the 1st shirt I bought for him because he said it wasn't the right color so we had to go online and look at what color Goofy wore. Bright orange shirt and black vest. So the night before the party I was scrounging around at Kmart while Jacob was at soccer practice for an orange shirt. $10.00 for an orange shirt that looked like a road side worker shirt. Nice. Then I was frantically making him a "black" vest the next morning. finally he was happy.



He had fun at the party but they were a little bugged at Castle Dark because they were dropped off at 5:00 and it didn't open until 7:00. In the end I don't think it mattered because they were having fun goofing off together.

Saturday morning was Halloween day and it started off with leaving at 7:00 in the morning for an early soccer game for Jacob. We lost 11 to 1 with this crazy good team including a superstar player that almost single handedly got 7 goals in the first quarter. (Supposedley he wasn't even their best player). Even though we lost bad to them it was nice because their best player (that day) came up to Jeff and commented on how well he thought that Jacob played the game. Nice for Jacob to hear.

From soccer all of us went over to the school to redeam our pancake breakfast and carwash tickets. It was a fundraiser for 6th grade science camp and so we bought tickets and Jacob and I ended up working it.

Here is some views from the inside of my car as the kids were "washing" my car. More like rubbing a little soap on random sections of the car and then rubbing more of it on each other. I can only imagine the spots that were missed. Luckily the people drying the car did a better job. (More adults helping and windexing the window).



Let's just say that you could tell who was excited to be there and who wasn't...



After my car was done Jacob and I....more I helped with the drying. The goal was to get the 6th graders to help earn their money by working but I couldn't believe how hard it was to get Jacob to help. Maybe because he just got done with a soccer game but he was like this the whole time...




Although he seemed curiously fine when he was sitting with his friends...



Jacob wanted snacks at the snack bar so I tried bribing him to work hard promising him I'd buy him something when we were finished. In the end the dollar stayed in my pocket.

That afternoon we let the kids relax some and Jeff and I went to do some last minute errands. One of them was to try and buy a costume for Jacob. He kept saying that he wanted to just wear his soccer outfit but since he wears it every week Jeff didn't think it would make a good costume. There was some talk of trying to make him a zombie, painting him with soccer injuries and other stuff but in the end we thought we would try to get him a real costume. Luckily we found a costume at KMart (came apart) for 1/2 off. It was a zoo there. We were pretty lucky to find one with all the pieces together. But in the end Jacob, Dad and everyone was happy that he looked like a real trick or treater.



After trunk or treat Jacob had seen other boys wear their football uniforms so he was a little bugged that we didn't let him wear his soccer outfit :)

At trunk or treat Taylor and Jacob hooked up with friends and were off to roam the cooridors of cars.





This year Ashley was a crow...if you couldn't tell.

She picked up these wings at a yard sale. They reminded me of something a Victoria Secret model would wear so I wasn't so excited to buy them for her at first. But, when she insisted that she wanted them for Halloween to be a crow I gave in.



We made her a feather mask, claws from gloves and wood beads and dressed her in black. The fake fir jacket I was going to have her wear didn't make it because she thought it was too uncomfortable and bulky so we ended up with ....



a black Christmas shirt instead.

She had some odd looks and a friend ask her why she was wearing a Christmas shirt but overall she was happy with her costume.



Ashley hung out with Jeff and collected candy while I passed it out. Then we switched. She didn't want to go around again but I kind of forced her so I could say hi to everyone.

At about 7:30 we left to go home to let them trick or treat some in the neighborhood. Taylor declared he was done so he went home and passed out candy. Jacob went to one house and then declared he had enough candy and he was done too.

Luckily as we were walking we happened to run into Ashley's best friend whose Dad was taking her and her sister trick or treating. So I walked with them so she could trick or treat with her friends.



Trick or treating in our neighborhood is a joke now days. It's gotten worse and worse over the years with the number of houses that pass out candy dwindling down to 3 or 4 a street. It's a long walk for not a lot of reward. It doesn't help that people from all over the area bus themselves in to trick or treat in our neighborhood so the houses that do pass out get slammed with groups of 25 or more people at a time coming to your door over and over. In the past we've run out of candy in an hour, and even when we haven't run out of candy we have to turn the lights off when we're done because we'll get people knocking on the door at 10:00 at night!

After awhile Ashley expressed "Hey they only gave me one piece of candy!"..."This is taking a long time"... I laughed and told her welcome to real trick or treating.

We went for awhile until Ashley finally admitted she was tired (she went a lot longer than I expected). On the way home she finally let me put her in the stroller (so glad I pushed it the whole time) and came home to pour out her loot. She said that the reason she wanted to trick or treat was to try and get as much candy as Jacob had (he had a lot).



And my favorite event of the night...

I walked to the door to see a full grown adult in costume standing on the porch peering into Jacob's candy bucket looking ready to reach in.

She sees me and asks Jacob "Aren't you the one passing out the candy?" He looks at her dumbly and says "NO" So she walks over to me and opens her bag up, and says "My kids were just here" Obviously that was supposed to explain everything.

Not willing to make myself any more uncomfortable (because obviously she wasn't) I just gave her a piece of candy so she would go away.

Another thing our neighborhood is known to get every year...full grown adults trick or treating for themselves. Pretty tacky if you ask me but her lack of shame at trying to take from a kid's candy bag to fill her own just topped it all off.

Um why don't you just go buy a bag of candy yourself!

Guess what tomorrow they'll all be 1/2 off!!!