Halloween 2016

The week of Halloween my little kitchen helper was talking on the phone (it was either Grammy or Maci she was pretending to talk to).

The church Halloween party and carnival--Every year our Bears are in charge of the church Halloween carnival.  It's actually a required activity for them to earn their Bear.  Kai was going to run a booth he called "The Spinner of Doom".  Instead of making one, Reid decided to buy a spinner.  It's a nice one and it made the booth super easy.  The only problem was that Kai threw up the morning of the Halloween party (remember that stomach virus Finn had?  uggh!) and so he was unable to attend the carnival.  So, I had to run the booth with these two cuties running around the carnival on their own.  Kai was very upset to miss the party.  But luckily his scout leaders let him write me a thank you note for running his booth and counted the requirement for him.  Yay!  So, for Halloween, Finn was Iron Man, Bree was Doc McStuffins, and when we actually went trick-or-treating Kai was a stormtrooper.  I had to go to 6 different stores to find that silly storm trooper costume!

As if life wasn't crazy enough that week, preschool was at my house.  So I threw a Halloween party for our little 3-4 year olds.  I had planned on taking more pictures but it's hard to run a party for 6 kids and take pictures at the same time.  This is Eleanor eating her donut off the string and Bree's little "best friend" Xander is off to the side.

Other than eating donuts off a string, we had a spiderweb walk where the kids had to stay on the web and pick up all of the spiders and put them in a cup.  It was a fun game.  One mom came to help for a small part of the party and I am SO glad.  In this is picture is Molli (dressed as a queen) and Wally.

We had two crafts that day.  This one on the top was a create your own bat out of shapes.  Bree took it quite seriously and had to make it just right but I was impressed with the various interpretations of a bat.  And then under the bat was a pumpkin patch where I had drawn a pumpkin vine and written the letters we have learned so far and they had to match those letters to the correct uppercase letters (which were written on fall stickers to decorate the vine).  They needed a lot of assistance on that project!  Yikes!

We enjoyed some good weather that week and it was one of the few times that I can say trick-or-treating in Colorado wasn't bad at all.  We went with friends this year in their nicer neighborhood and my kids SCORED!  In just one hour, everyone's pumpkins were utterly full and heavy with several pounds of candy.  

Another view of bike riding that day

Reid wanted some bright yellow shirts to wear trick-or-treating so he bought a 2-pack and all of the kids had to try it on and take a picture with daddy.

And just because it was 2 days after Halloween I'll throw in a picture of  food happiness.  It's not often that I cook this meal, but when I do it feels like heaven.  It's sausage lentil soup and then rolls (these are from Texas Roadhouse).  I don't make this often because I'm the only one who really loves it and so I end up eating the whole pot of soup over the course of several days and that's enough to make me think twice about making it again for a long while.  But it's yummy and one of my favorites and just feels like comfort food perfection.