Halloween 2013

  Last year the kids weren't allowed to dress up for Halloween so they were extra excited to be able to wear costumes this year.  I am proud to announce that this was our first year since the girls have had an opportunity to dress up that we have been "princess-free".  Lilyanah chose to be a ballerina and Ethne went as "Robin girl".  My favorite part of her homemade costume is the R patch that my lovely and talented mama sewed for her.  She loved her costume so much she wore it for three days afterwards!  Next to Lilyanah is one of her best friends Maddie from up the street and by Ethne is little Madison, also a neighbor from around a couple of corners.

  

 The night of Halloween we had friends over for dinner (ghost shaped homemade pizza & mummy weinerwraps) before heading out to trick-or-treat together.  Lilyanah chose to be batgirl, Ethne was still Robin girl and Westyn went as Batman.  Rather than spend more than $100 on costumes we took the homemade costume route.  Will had the wig and glasses from being Will-I-am for a kareoke thing at work so he just went and bought a shirt and surprised us as Superman!  Since I'm writing it here I ruin it for later but Will joked about having me see what Dad wore that day and getting something to try to match as closely as possible and go around mimicking him all night.  Dad should take that as a compliment I think that the only thing keeping Will's costume from being Superman vs. dad is the clothes.  : )
Unforunately I only got one picture of little Westyn in his costume.  I had a full outfit for him including a black batman shirt and black pants but he was comfortable in what he was wearing.

  Trick-or-treating has changed significantly over the years.  This was the first year that we had to chase the kids down vs. leading them from house to house.  The kids never did seem to learn that you're only as fast as your slowest team mate.  The youngest little guy Jack was only 2 so they were waiting A LOT.  : )  Once they got t to the door they all wanted to ring the doorbell so we had to have them all take turns which worked out well.  It was drizzling the entire time but fortunately held off the hard rain until we were almost done.  You can see all the rain on Will's shirt where he was photo bombing the picture of Ayumi  

and Lilyanah.  Ayumi is one of Lilyanah's best friends in her class.  She moved here from Idaho this year after being there for 2 years (like us).  Her family originally came from Japan and she has been very sweet to Lilyanah writing her notes about how kind Lilyanah is.  She has also taught Lilyanah quite a bit of origami.  I think she was a pirate.
Halloween is also the end of budget season for Will and since the kids wanted him to be a part of our pumpkin carving we didn't end up carving our pumpkins until the night of Halloween.  Lilyanah was actually the only one who really cared to carve pumpkins.  So of course it was her pumpkin that had, shall we say, more than we bargained for?
Grandpa was helping cut the pumpkins open and when he cut open Lilyanah's they found little black bugs crawling all around inside of it.  Lilyanah was DEVASTATED.  Grandpa did everything he could to make it right, driving all over to try to find a pumpkin for her but there were none to be found. I had what I thought was a brilliant idea to set the pumpkin on fire and have a Halloween bonfire in the front.  Kill those nasty little buggers!  Lilyanah warmed up after quite a few "MYYYYY PUMPKINNNNNN" sobs.  The kids all roasted some hot dogs before calling it a night.  I told the kids anyone can carve a pumpkin but how many people do you know having a pumpkin bonfire!?

The next day grandpa found a cooking pumpkin in the grocery store and brought that home making Lilyanah, who FINALLY got to carve her very own pumpkin, very happy.