Halloween 2013

 John as Russell from "Up"

Took Nathaniel's merit badge sash, spray painted a white hat yellow, and made some felt Wilderness Explorer logos for the hat and flag. Added our backpacking pack and a square of yellow fabric for the sash and there you go. I thought he looked great.

 Elementary school activities 

 Will was not impressed with the costumes at the parade and clung onto John or I the whole time. He got into costume later.

 My crazy cute kids.

Peter lights up the pumpkins and Will checks them out.

 Rebecca as Darla from "Finding Nemo." 

As you can see she had a different theme going on here than her friends. 
Way to be yourself Rebecca:)

We tried a few different forms of fake braces and head gear for her but none of them were comfortable and so we decided to go without.

The minion and his mama.

 Checkin' out our Halloween-crazy neighbor display.

Will is cautiously curious.

This being his first Halloween he was participating in I think he did pretty good. I took him to several houses. He'd pat the door (but not knock on it) and then when they'd hold out their candy bowl he'd place his hand on the candy (but not take a piece). 
Peter said it was as though he were pronouncing a blessing the candy-- "go forth and multiply!" I thought that was a good way of describing it.
At first he was scared and cried when Peter put on his traditional Halloween sounds cd. Then he thought it was funny and stood at the door and yelled to the trick-or-treaters. He got tired of knocking on doors pretty fast and never wanted to leave any of the candy in his bucket so he spent a lot of time just wandering up and down the sidewalk by our house while I tried to keep him from wandering into the street. 

 He eventually came inside and sat by dad on the couch and read his scriptures:) Because of our regular semi-regular family scripture study Will likes to take out one of Book of Mormon copies and pretend to "read" it out loud. It is just one more thing his mom finds ridiculously cute.

I spent some time tonight cutting into pumpkins we hadn't gotten around to carving just so I could eat the seeds. Pumpkin seeds and I are exceedingly close. They are absolutely one of my things ever. 
Their roasted perfection borders on sacred for me because this is the only time of year I get them. (I think store bought ones are nasty.)

Decided to go with pumpkin soup for dinner for the festivities. I don't really have a specific tradition for Halloween dinner except for simple.
This was sautéed onion and garlic, canned pumpkin, half-and half, a bit of brown sugar and some spices. Rebecca said it looked like poo but tasted pretty good.

Note: If this looks like a typical-perfect-mommy-blog-post don't believe it. I spent last night on a stress-induced fog of kids harassing me to finish costumes and trying to get a grip on the house in preparation for today. When I asked Peter today about why I was getting no help from anyone last night he said "no one wants to be around you when you are on a yelling rampage."

*cue crickets and thoughtful pondering.

I sent John to school this morning and then crawled back into bed and slept for three hours only to awaken and realize I had missed the activity I had planned for John's class because I slept right through it. (Can you say "loser?") 

Just saying, it's real life around here.