Halloween catch-up

Yes, it it January, and I'm finally backdating a Halloween post. Par for the course around here. Hopefully Rob has someone there to revive him from the shock.

Halloween isn't our favorite holiday, but it was eventful. First the parade at school, held on the 28th because Fridays are early days.

Followed immediately by class parties. I was in charge of Ellie's class party, which was fun thanks to lots of help. Lucky Ainsley got to attend Ellie's party after her own in kindergarten.

That night was our ward carnival, which was amazing. Rob is well-known as a halloween scrooge, and had his own booth. Even he dressed up this year though, it's pretty impressive that he can still fit into the kilt he bought on his mission!

So the actual day of halloween was just a normal school day. The girls did have some cute shirts and tights to wear.

And this year Rob and I got the treat. All of our kids went trick-or-treating with friends, leaving us alone in a quiet and warm house! I managed photos of Joey with his group of friends, and the girls, with their friends, but didn't embarrass Robbie by taking a photo of the older kids.

As I said in my previous post, we made it to see three out of four grandparents, always a fun tradition. We feel lucky that the kids still have great-grandparents to visit!

It was fun, but busy! Next year might have to be another halloween vacation. Maybe Hawaii this time?

Happy Halloween!

This is especially for Ralph and Judy. We made it to the other grandparents because they're all within two miles of our house. But by the time the kids finished their homework, it was time to meet their friends, and too late when they finished to drive downtown—sorry Ralph and Judy! More candy for you. Complete details on all the Halloween festivities to follow, hopefully soon, just wanted you to see the trick-or-treaters you missed! In case you can't tell, Ellie is a gypsy, Robbie a surgeon (who didn't bother to take off his cargo shorts and sweatshirt before putting on his scrubs!), Ainsley a witch, and Joey is something scary. According to Shawn, most Americans consume 24 lbs. of candy each year. The way the kids were groaning about how heavy their bags were, we may have picked up our quota.

On the Last Day of Halloween

Yes, it's Sunday, and here are my kids trick-or-treating. We went to my parents for dinner, and knew they'd want to see the kids costumes since we never made it down there on Saturday.

We stopped by great-grandma's on the way home. We tried the Backman's too, but no one was home.
I didn't dress up, but I'll go ahead and play fortune-teller right now. I predict a trip next halloween. :)

The Never Ending Halloween

I'm going to be glad to start blogging about something else after tomorrow. The festivities continued today, with Trunk & Treat at our ward. Robbie didn't even bother taping Smarties to his pants, he copied Rob and went as a Utes Fan.
Here's Joey with his haul. On the plus side, no one was really interested in trick-or-treating in the rain.
So we got to enjoy some homemade chili and the game while the girls manned the door. Slow night though—the doorbell rang a total of four times, with only 10 kids. Perfect. Even Rob couldn't complain about that.

Halloween Continued, Preschool Program

It's tough to get a casual shot of Ainsley, because once she sees the camera she strikes a pose or makes a face.

I'm feeling guilt because I didn't invite Ralph and Judy (or my parents, although I knew they were working) to Ainsley's program. Judy's best friend was there watching her grandson and couldn't believe Judy wasn't there too. So I felt bad, but Judy was very understanding when I called her. I blame Rob's negative attitude, which is clearly contagious, because I felt like I was saving them the trouble of it. Ainsley was very cute though, and so excited about her "performance." So, again for the grandparents:

Halloween Continued, The School Parade

This is another "especially for grandma" post.
Ellie borrowed Samantha's Alice in Wonderland costume, and looked so cute. As soon as she came home from school she informed me that next year she wants to be a gypsy, like her teacher. She's got plans for the year after that too—Cleopatra.
Ainsley was excited to wear her costume to the parade. We saw several bigger ladybugs, but none as cute as this bug.
Joey is sort of obsessed with ninjas right now, and this was easy to put together, yea! The current debate at our house is whether a ninja or a samurai would come out on top in a fight.
Rob is so vocally against halloween, and Robbie still worships his dad, so it's no surprise that he claimed he didn't want to dress up. We saw this idea on Family Fun, and it was clever and low-maintenance, not to mention cheap. A bag of Smarties and a roll of packing tape. Yep, he's a smarty-pants.

Halloween week begins

I've been trying to keep Ainsley out of her costume all week long, worried that she'd ruin it before the big day. So she was happy to have a legitimate reason to wear it today, at her ballet class.

Speaking of costumes, Rob hates to dress up (along with every other aspect of halloween), so we were brainstorming ideas for him. The kids liked Scrooge, Oscar the Grouch and Grumpy. Feel free to top that in the comments. Brownies to anyone who suggests an idea that he actually wears. :)

This is Halloween

Or rather, this is us skipping Halloween. When Shawn and Melissa invited us to join them and the Boydens at Disneyland for the weekend, no one was more surprised than I was that Rob agreed on such short notice. I mean, it took him FIVE YEARS to pick out and buy his road bike. We're not exactly spontaneous. But as Melissa said here, we "clearly underestimated Rob's hatred of all things Halloween. He was more than happy to leave costumes and trick-or-treating behind." We had a great trip—thanks Stringhams and Boydens! Here are some highlights:
Alright, this isn't really a highlight, but I can't document this trip without mentioning our three hour stop north of Beaver. What's sad is that we actually got out of the house at 6:00 a.m., which is a record for us, only to be delayed by a nasty snowstorm.

While we were waiting for the gates to open our first day there, a cast member (Bob, pictured here with us) said he was looking for a family of six to open the park. Several families raised their hands until he added "from Utah." That's us! It was fun to be the first ones in.

Both of the boys were picked for Jedi training, another first for us. I wish I had a photo of Ainsley hiding behind my back every time Darth Maul came near us.

We didn't see as many characters this visit, but it was fun to see a few in costume.

We loved Toy Story, the latest ride at California Adventure.

The decorations everywhere were great. The Haunted House was completely redone in "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

We got several shots with Mickey though, all in different outfits—he must have been busy changing his clothes every five minutes. :)

Joey was picked to be in one of the shows. Too bad he's not very dramatic.

It was three times the fun on days two and three, since the Stringhams and Boydens were there too.

Rob thinks this photo sums up the whole trip pretty well.

The whole group.

No costumes this year, so we settled for shots in their Halloween shirts.

More photos here.

Halloween insanity

Since Halloween Scrooge has already covered the negative aspects of the day, I'll share the highlights:

The kids love halloween. They love to dress up. Thanks to the Stringhams for outfitting our little duck and granting Ellie's wish to be a witch this year. Joey was a fairly friendly looking vampire (I only got one photo with the fangs). Robbie took the easy way out as a soccer player.

They also love the parade at school. Except for one sad little duck, who really wanted to be in the parade too.

And of course they love the class parties. This year I was in charge of Robbie's class party, so it was a crazy morning—I had to have all the kids (in costume) and party supplies at school by nine, and finally got home around noon, long enough to pick up a few things before heading back to pick up the kids at 1:05.
Then we headed to the church for the cub scout party. Robbie and Joey got to be mummified, plus they played games, had a treasure hunt and decorated cupcakes.
After that we headed to grandparent's houses for trick-or-treating. Of course Ainsley fell asleep in the car, but woke up at the last stop, Great-grandma Clayton's. It was all I could do to not fall asleep too.
By the time we made it home for dinner I was almost agreeing with Halloween Scrooge. After some Jamba Juice, I caught my second wind, and enjoyed taking the kids to a few favorite neighbors for trick-or-treating. One of our neighbors hands out freshly made scones, and another makes flowers or swords out of balloons.  It really was fun. Best of all, the kids knew they were leaving their candy out for the great pumpkin, so they were content to head home and watch Scooby Doo and the Goblin King. Sure enough the great pumpkin came and traded all their candy for some small toys—Ellie & Ainsley got Polly Pockets, Joey got an Iron Man action figure, Robbie got the latest installment in the Alex Rider series, and we got a candy-free house!