Halloween

Ahh! Sunday Halloweens. What the heck do you do when you don't live in Utah? Well, for starters, we will be skipping trick-or-treating. We will be handing out candy still, to anyone who comes to our door. We're not Grinches, you know.

That doesn't mean we didn't have fun this weekend, though. We had plenty going on last Friday and my children mistakenly thought yesterday was Halloween. I had some fun activities planned already and they were already warned that we wouldn't be going door-to-door.

So, what did we do, you ask? Well, let's start with Friday, the 29th.

So, Akiko's school has a uniform policy (which I love), but on the last Friday of the month is a free dress day. Convenient for October, isn't it? So, we got up early and dressed Akiko in her costume.

 

What a pretty little kitty!

Then the boys got to put their costumes on so we could go see Akiko at her school's Halloween parade.

Moses as Anpanman!

 

For the record, I did not pose this at all. It's all Moses channeling Anpanman himself. Totally cracked me up!

And here's Asher as a little mouse. His costume cost me only $7.60!

We then headed over to Akiko's school to watch her in the parade.

We had to wait a little while so they could finish getting set up, so here are the pre-parade shots of Akiko with her classmates.

Then the parade started. They went class by class (i.e. the 4th graders, the 2nd graders, etc.), so while we waited for the kindergarteners, Moses and our friend's little boy, J, ran around in the background. They kept making running passes. It was really cute!

I was also able to get an action shot of Moses' Anpanman's cape blowing in the wind and another of him getting ready to fly. (Moses insisted the whole time he was in costume that we refer to him as Anpanman.)

Then it was the kindergarten's turn to walk in the parade. They allowed younger siblings to join if the wanted to. Moses Anpanman was all for it, but then he seemed a little unsure about his decision afterwards.

Then, after all the kids had gone, they allowed staff and any parents that dressed up parade around, too. Since I dressed up, too, I decided I may as well. So, Moses Anpanman got one more go and Asher the mouse got a turn, too.

And here are the boys and me afterwards.

Later that evening, we had the ward party and trunk-or-treat. I was a single mom there for a little bit (Joseph's train was severely delayed) so I wasn't able to take a whole lot of pictures of this event. There were food, games... the usual.

Akiko the Cat caught Asher the Mouse. Anpanman caught a hotdog.

Joseph was finally able to make it! Just in time for another parade.

So, that was our busy Friday. Saturday, we did our tradition of baking and decorating sugar cookies. I kept it simple this year with only one batch and one cookie shape. 

The cookies I did for our Primary class.

The kids' masterpieces. Bet you can't tell which one I did!

Moses dug right in.

After we got the cookie fun cleaned up, it was time to carve jack'o'lanterns.

We let Akiko scoop the seeds out of hers. She was totally grossed out.

 

Sorry, the pictures are a little blurry and her hair fell into her face, but her faces are priceless!

The carved pumpkins.

So, one of the pumpkins we'd picked up had started rotting on the bottom, rendering it uncarveable. We sent Sam to the store to get a replacement. However, trying to find a good carving pumpkin on Halloween Eve is like trying to find the year's most popular toy for your kid on Christmas Eve. He got a really cool pumpkin though. 

It was not a carving pumpkin. It was so hard. We could hardly penetrate it. So, in order to decorate it, I let Moses paint it to death.

And like a true artist, he got paint all over himself. Even on his back!

Today, for Halloween, we're making pumpkin pie from scratch. Yeah, I'm talking about roasting and pureeing the pumpkin myself. And we're gonna do it again for Thanksgiving.

The Halloween festivities were a lot of fun. I really hope that my kids will have fond memories of these years when they're older. I sure have a lot of fun participating with them. I do feel bad that we're not trick-or-treating, but I tried to fill that void. We have the next five years in a row to go on Halloween night. Besides, Akiko is having a blast handing out the candy (she's doing so as I post this).