Our Halloween Weekend

Halloween lasted nearly an entire weekend in our house.  It was fun and for the first time it seems that Kai now loves Halloween.  The festivities started on Friday the 28th with our ward's trunk-or-treat.  Kai went dressed as Superman and Finn was supposed to go dressed as a pumpkin.  However, while Kai was more than eager to get dressed, Finn wanted nothing to do with it.  We took his costume with us in hopes that he would succumb to the peer pressure to put it on.  I should have known better!  We got to the church parking lot and found all kinds of wonderful costumes and friends handing out candy.  Kai jumped right in and Finn refused to go within 10 feet of anyone dressed in a costume.  I finally dragged him over to a friend's trunk where he received his first piece of candy.  But he still wasn't sold.  After about 3 pieces, though, he started to think it was worth it to tough it out.  Kai completed the loop of cars in a matter of 20 minutes or so and Finn managed to approach maybe half of them.  I love our ward and we have vowed to actually hand out candy next year.  Our bishopric even had a fire going in the middle of the parking lot (in a fire pit) along with cookies and hot chocolate.  It was really fun!

On Sunday, we carved our pumpkins.  Kai was very excited to do this and he helped Reid to design his jack-o-lantern before they got started.  Reid did about 99% of the work, but Kai did assist in cleaning out the pumpkin.  He was a bit concerned about the mess at first, but eventually got over it.  After they finished Kai's pumpkin, Reid went to work on an Elmo pumpkin for Finn.  It turned out pretty well and Finn loved (and still loves) his "Nuk nuk" (said with a little tongue click and means pumpkin). 

This is what Finn and I were doing while the other two were carving pumpkins!

It was around this point when Kai exclaimed, "Making jack-o-lanterns is easy!"
Reid and I both laughed.  Yes, it's easy when you have slave labor!  :)

Finally, Halloween day arrived.  It seriously was one of the busiest days of my entire year!  Kai's class had a "Fall Party" for the entire class period and as a room mom I needed to be there.  So, Finn spent nearly 3 hours with friends in the morning while I helped run the class party.  The party turned out well and we had a great time, but it definitely wore me out.

Kai's Pre-K class party

playing musical chairs

Kai's friend Eli

The winning round.  I wasn't watching the whole time but I don't believe that Kai could have won this completely honestly.  Just saying, I know my kid!

After school we had about an hour and a half to ourselves before friends came over to play while their older siblings went to an appointment.  They were over for a bit more than 2 hours.  After that we ran to Wal-Mart to pick up drinks for dinner with friends, headed home to get Reid, and then were off to our friends for a combined Halloween dinner.  In all, there were 4 families from our ward that got together for dinner and trick-or-treating, and it was a lot of fun.  I so want to make that a Halloween tradition!  The older kids ended up breaking away from the group (or you could say that the younger kids straggled behind the group) during the trick-or-treating, so for that portion of the evening it was only me and Finn, Reid and Kai, and Matt and Peter.  But we had a good time knocking on doors and getting candy.  We actually hadn't planned on having Finn go out trick-or-treating, but when he saw what Kai was getting to do he insisted on it.  I tried to get him in his costume and again he refused.  We eventually compromised on him wearing just the pumpkin hat, but then we didn't have a coat for him.  Reid went to the car and found that we actually had the perfect coat--an orange one--in the car!  Despite not wearing a costume, Finn looked exactly like a pumpkin and everyone knew it.  Success!  The night was perfect and clear and not cold.  Seriously it was the best Halloween we've had here.  I wish every year would be the same because then I might actually grow to love Halloween, too.  Now we only need to figure out how we're going to eat all of this candy!

So sad that this is the only picture we have from Halloween night.  I left my camera at school and the cell phone wasn't the greatest for taking pictures.  Finn was adorable in his "costume" as the hat kept falling over his eyes and then he would have to adjust it.  It was really cute!  Maybe I'll just dress him up again so we can get a good picture.