HALLOWEEN!!

Halloween. I gotta say, this year wasn't like other years. We bought one - that's right ONE - pumpkin, and we DIDN'T EVEN CARVE IT!! I was feeling kinda loser-ish for not ever carving it. In fact, it's still sitting on the desk in the kitchen completely in tact. Maybe we'll turn it into a turkey or something ;) The good thing, is that I was MUCH less stressed this year. Maybe it's because I wasn't having to fashion some sort of vehicle out of a box this time. Whew!! It wasn't until quite late Saturday night, after everyone was out of their costumes, that I realized that I never got a picture of all four of my kids together in their costumes! Good thing I took a bunch of them individually... and I gotta say, they looked pretty cute!

Eryn decided (just a few days before) that she would be a gypsy. She had the head scarf, the blouse, and the skirt... and she knew she could borrow some jewelry from me. All she needed was a little something to wear around her waist. I found the cute coin trim at Walmart, sewed it to a super cheap piece of fabric, sloppily cut a piece of red, frayed fabric for a sash, and tied them around her waist.

Kaitlyn had decided quite a few weeks prior to the big day that she wanted to be a hippie. We get Family Fun magazine, and they always have such awesome Halloween costume ideas... and they had instructions for making wigs!! PERFECT! It was really a lot easier than I thought it would be, and actually kinda fun to make. I made her vest in about a 1/2 hour one night out of a brown piece of fleece... then cut some triangles from some sweet, psychadelic fabric to make her jeans into bell-bottoms, and there ya have it! (Plus we had this awesome flag shirt that is AUTHENTIC hippie! Thanks mom!)

B-man... sweet B: "Mom. I want to be Aang from Avatar for Halloween." When the movie Avatar came out, my children were so confused. It looked NOTHING like the cartoon series they had been watching for so long. Nickelodeon has had a series called "Avatar: The Last Airbender" for years, and it is my kiddos' favorite!! When they made a movie just recently, they obviously couldn't call it Avatar, since the one with the blue alien guys came out right before it (which is quite a good movie actually), so it was just called "The Last Airbender." Eryn is our only kid who has seen the movie... and she says the series is WAY BETTER. So anyway, after all that rambling, we made B a costume that looks like Aang. It only took 3 packages of Golden Yellow Rit Dye to finally get the almost-right colored sweats... then a cape made from red fleece, K's red soccer socks, and a bald cap with a blue arrow cut from craft foam. He felt like he was really Aang!!

I did a little photo-shopping to make his "bald head" look a little more real on this one ;)

The Haydster saw this firefighter costume at Target in September, and that was it!! Hooray for wanting to be something easy, instead of a backhoe or a train this year!! It really saved me a lot of grief ;) And he looked pretty dang cute.

As for trick-or-treating... Eryn's gotten too old to do that, but she WAS going to come along just for fun to be with us, and she ended up not feeling very well, so she stayed home and watched a movie. Jared stayed home to hand out candy. And I headed out with the other three - it was POURING rain, but we thought we could tough it out. We got across the street and decided to go back and get the van. They would run to a door, knock and get their candy, and come running back to the van to go to the next location. We got a little break for about 15 minutes, so they just walked from house to house while I hung out in the van, but then the rain came back. Poor kiddos - they were SOAKED! B's bald cap was getting all funky and stuck together, luckily our little fireman had his plastic hat and jacket, and the rain didn't bother him too much. Needless to say, our kids got WAY more candy than any kid ever needs!

After our neighborhood, we picked up our peeps who were still home, and headed over to see my Grandpa. Then it was off to Grama Cheryl and Papabob's house for dinner and fun. We watched Michael Jackson's thriller with all the cousins (only a few got a little scared) and headed home. Another Halloween come and gone... I still can't believe it. Welcome November!!!