Happy Halloween!!!

Wow! October has been SO busy but so much fun. Today was Halloween and it was great. We had a "late start" day at school so we had an extra hour to get ready this morning. The girls all wore their Halloween shirts with skirts and were super cute. We had time to make pumpkin shaped pancakes this morning before school too.

Good Morning!

Breakfast is pumpkin pancakes!!! They were so yummy!
All ready for school. I tried really hard this year to get the girls to wear their Halloween clothes as much as possible. Still sad that they don’t get to wear their costumes to school though.
 

 

I asked Aurora if she would come over and help get the house ready and spend Halloween with us. Couldn't have done it without her!  She wasn't sure about this feeding two babies at one time thing.

But she did a GREAT job!

I was able to put together skirt, shirts, and tights sets for the three girls out of just stuff we had in the Halloween box that had been hand - me- downs. Unfortunately, two pairs of the tights got big tears. So now I need to look for more tights on clearance. Isn't my house cute?!

Eli found this Spidermand costume in one of the boxes I had been going through and put it on that instant. From that time on, he would put his clothes on in the morning and then put the Spiderman suit on top pretty much everyday. I was really grateful when Halloween was over he decided he didn't have to wear it all the time.

Britta is our "lil pumpkin" and Kyla got her all ready for trick-or-treating with this tiny trick-or-treat bucket! (and NO we didn't take the babies trick-or-treating) 

On Sunday I started toying with the idea of throwing together a last minute Halloween Open House. When we first moved into the ward the young families would rotate having an open house each year.  It was really fun to have a place to hang out and chill with friends.  Most of the other years we spent too much time trick-or-treating but this year I thought it would actually be more fun to hang out at the house with friends.  I called Melissa on the way home from dropping Grandma Cynthia at the airport to see if she would be my partner in throwing an impromptu open house.  Right after that I called Aurora and asked her if she could spend the day with me cleaning the house, taking care of babies and having a party. The girls were really sweet and put together some games for the kids.  Nora printed and cut out pictures of little pumpkins and did a treasure hunt. Kyla printed off a Halloween bingo game complete with prizes and markers.  Myka had Dad help her make strips of a sheet for a mummy wrap game.

Ready to hit the streets.  Little Red Riding Hood, a soceress, a pirate, and spiderman (who sometimes morphed into a fireman if he needed a jacket :) The kids got SO much use out of their costumes this year.  They wore them like 6 times and we didn't even go to the school party. Kyla won a costume contest at activity days and got a $10 gift card to McDonalds and a free coupon book. 

For the past couple of years I have had this great idea of organizing a "costume swap" in the ward, and this year I actually made it happen.  It worked quite well because the primary was holding their program the last Saturday in September. I just used the Relief Society room and set up everyone's costumes that they brought and the moms browsed while the kids were in practice.  Most of us wanted the costumes back when people were done with them so we wrote our names on the tags.  We totally scored when it came to Kyla's costume because that was the exact one she had picked out from the Party City catalog (that I told her I wouldn't buy).  Nora also got her dress at the costume exchange.  Eli's and Myka's were costumes that we had from before. 

We were so glad that our friends came up to spend the evening with us! The Lawrence's came over early and I made chicken noodle soup for everyone. Then Daniel and Tom took the girls trick-or-treating around the neighborhood for about 45 minutes and then brought them home for the Open House.

Eli's "kitty" pumpkin, and Myka's pirate

 

Kyla's happy face and Nora's owl. They all did a great job and were assisted by the cool new drill bit I bought Daniel and his jigsaw.   

Eli's kitty and Myka's pirate

Kyla's smiley and Nora's owl

I had Daniel take the firepit out on the driveway and everyone had fun hanging out around the fire but it was pretty chilly and started sprinkleing. We ended up having about 6 families stop in and I think everyone had a good time.  Well except the two families that forgot their 8 yr old daughters at home for an hour, until their neighbor looked up my # to tell them the girls were alone at home :) 

The babies slept for a good part of the party and were REALLY glad when everyone left and it was quiet! Britta on the left Anya on the right.  I still want to make the kids get in their costumes and get good individual pictures AND one with ALL of them in their costumes. I'll have to post one of the babies in their costumes but we actually didn't put them in the costumes on Halloween.