A Happy Halloween it was

We celebrated our first Halloween with a school-aged kid this year. It made for a slightly ambitious and tiring, but definitely fun day.

RVC dressed as a ghost bride, wearing a wedding dress costume made by Aunt Val, embellished with a few spooky additions: a spider in the veil, a black bouquet, and a spider web painted on her cheek. She looked pretty cute. We dropped her off at her classroom and then joined the other families in the auditorium to watch the costume parade.

The three younger siblings also got to dress up in costume. TLC, struggling to catch the early morning Halloween spirit, opted to keep things simple with his Spiderman jacket. SCC wore her princess costume, but was not too excited about getting her picture taken. CAC did her part to carry on the bunny costume tradition as girl number 3.

Unfortunately, my photography skills failed me during the parade, so I missed a good picture of RVC in the parade. Here she is later in her classroom during the kindergarten Halloween party.

I signed up to help as a room parent this year. Friday was my first time visiting RVC's class (Grandma Bushman was nice enough to take the younger 3 home), so it was fun to finally meet the kids and see RVC in her element. We played charades, read Halloween stories, made a handprint spider craft, and enjoyed yummy donuts and apple juice--all the fun you can fit in to an hour-long party.

After school we took TLC to his Kindermusik class. He was a little more excited about his costume once he could see himself in the big dance mirror and run around with the other kids. The girls and I went to a nearby carwash (we somehow missed the forecast for rain...oh well) and then joined back with TLC and his class for some Halloween songs.

Then it was back home for lunch, naps [for some], and some last minute pumpkin carving. RVC got more into this than the others; she even designed her own face to carve, glued it on her pumpkin and carved it out almost all by herself. I also got our pumpkin stew ready to cook in the oven.

TEC was sad to miss the pumpkin carving this year, but made it home for an early evening of dinner, costumes, and neighborhood trick-or-treating. You'll notice that by evening, TLC had ditched Spiderman in favor of last year's pirate gear (the Thomas-the-Train costume also made an appearance this year at the ward Halloween party the weekend before). CAC and I stayed home to pass out candy to the ZERO trick-or-treaters that came to our door. We finally left our bowl of candy on our front porch and headed off to pay visits to Gramie and Boba, Grams and Papa, and Grandma and Grandpa (by then the kids had abandoned most of their costumes and the sugar highs had taken over, but it was still fun to see grandparents).

From Collages

So like many other families, we are all about sugar now. I do my part to be a good parent--candy bowl high up on top of the fridge, 4 pieces of candy limit for the day, no candy until after breakfast, no climbing up to that candy bowl, get down off that stool, I mean it!...are you kidding me?