Halloween Bash

We decided late last week to host a Halloween party at our house. It had been a long time since we'd all been together without our kids (and there are a LOT of kids from all of these families). It was nice to be just with the grown ups, enjoying each other's company. There was so much laughter and fun! I am so blessed to have all of these amazing friends in my life.

I loved all of the costumes. It was so fun to answer the door and see everyone in their costumes. I think these guys made me laugh the hardest though.

The Mormon Rappers

Tyler and Tiffany

Surfer Guy and Bedtime Beauty

Lincoln and Kim

Indian Princess and Indian Chief

me and Gavin

Vampire and The Donald

Shauna and Taylor

The Boxing Team

Mike and Jenni

Vagabond/Hobo and Witch

Dan and Lindsay

Japanese couple

(Authentic kimonos directly from Japan. Imagine Dax's disappointment to see "Made in China" on the tag.)

Dax and Stacy

There was so much yummy food! Monster munch popcorn, sweet sausage rolls, chips and queso, cheese ball and crackers, bread and spinach dip, cookies, meatballs, fruit and dip, chocolate rolo pretzels, witches rootbeer brew and orange cream soda. I'm pretty sure I gained at least 5 lbs. last night!

When we couldn't eat another bite, we put away the food and switched it up with some game playing. What better large group Halloween game than "Clue"? That's what I thought. Kim and Lincoln dominated this game.

Then it was time for more eating even though no one felt like eating one more thing. Couple's Donut Eating Race. The rules were simple. Girls went first, had to keep our hands behind our backs and eat one donut 'til it was gone. Then it was the guys' turn. I've watched these kind of contests on reality TV shows before and wondered what could be so hard about having to eat something sweet and yummy, like a pie, cake, donut, etc. I get it now. I felt like I was going to throw up and even though I really wanted to eat my donut and let Gavin have a turn, I just couldn't do it. It didn't help that I had been snacking on way too many sweet things all day and evening long.

We ended the evening with a tribal council. "As you know your costume represents your life in this game . . ." We held a vote for the best couple's costume. Then the chief said something like, "I'll go tally the votes."

The winners!!! Congrats Tiffany and Tyler on being the best mormon rappers ever.

Pumpkins and parades

We started off the morning, bright and early, with the school parade. They give time for all the little ones to parade around in their costume before the school started the big parade. Griffin was at his preschool party this year but Mia seemed to enjoy flaunting her costume. I don't think she even noticed that everyone was commenting about her friend's adorable cupcake costume, as they paraded around the gym.

These two crack me up. Seriously funny! I have to admit that I wasn't too excited about this costume idea when Ryan and Tate first came up with it, but I can't stop laughing when I see them together. And it's worth mentioning that Napoleon Dynamite is NOT wearing a wig. All his own hair. Pedro is sporting a wig, just in case you thought that was Ryan's hair.

Morgan really enjoyed the parade this year and didn't act as shy. She even stopped and smiled for the camera with her cute aide, Ms. Aubrey (80's neon chick) by her side.

Hadley was upset that so many parents commented on her "Pocahontas" costume when she was obviously not dressed up as Miss P but "Tiger Lily".

I think this costume won as my favorite. . . adorable blue jelly fish.

Halloween Parade supporters--Grandma, Mia and Gavin

I made it in time to Morgan's class to catch her class still all in their costumes. What a ham that Peter Pan is in the front of the picture!

Morgan and her BFF, Gracey

Ryan brought home this cute apple head witch that he made in class. LOVE it!!!

And we finally got to the pumpkin carving event. We missed out on this last year. We were in Disneyland right before Halloween and then Jack and I were both lucky enough to be sick with H1N1 over Halloween last year. I think the only time I got out of bed that weekend was to take a family costume picture and then went right back to bed. So it was like the little one's were celebrating Halloween for their very first time. Too young to remember carving pumpkins two years ago.

Mia wanted to do it all by herself. She is the age, you know. Gavin's kind gestures were halted with screams of "No! I do it all by myself, dad!" I loved when Gavin commented back, "well aren't you little Miss Independent?" Mia didn't like that name and quickly let him know, "I'm not Miss In-de-pen-dent! I'm Mia!" making sure she didn't miss a syllable.

Morgan enjoyed scooping the seeds back into the pumpkin from the pile of seeds on the bar more than scooping them out. She drew a really cute face on her pumpkin and Gavin helped her with the mouth and teeth. And if you remember, I did mention earlier about all those random leaves in my house. Check out Morgan's hair. Leaves not pumpkin seeds.

Griffin drew the cutest little pumpkin face and ears on his pumpkin and then Gavin helped him cut it out. It turned out so cute.

Hadley, Jack and Ryan decided to take their pumpkin carving skills up a notch this year and attempted to carve with the more advanced stencil drawing patterns. A few carving knives and intricate details were broken along the way but they all actually turned out looking pretty close to the pattern.

I stayed busy taking pictures and googling recipes for Roasted Pumpkin Seeds. I love seeds. Pumpkin seeds and Sunflower seeds are probably my favorite snacks. Not sure why I'd never tried making my own before because these were super easy and yummy!

Garlic and Kosher salt (my favorite of the two recipes)

Cinnamon and Brown sugar

Our spooky pumpkin-filled porch

Trunk or Treat

Our neighborhood Trunk-or-Treat was tonight. And let me just say it is quite the undertaking to get all 6 kids dressed in their costumes, hair done, fingernails painted, get myself ready in my costume and make soup to take to the dinner. After a lot of work we finally got everyone ready to go and just needed to find Mia. She was downstairs and this is what she looked like when she came upstairs to leave.

Apparently she found some halloween chocolate that she didn't really like so she held it in her mouth for 30 minutes (like she does when she doesn't like something) and let the chocolate drool drip all over her costume. Luckily we have another Tinkerbell dress that Hadley wore when she was little. Got her all cleaned up and in the other Tink dress only this time she had to wear butterfly wings. Her Tink wings only work with the new costume.

Went to get in the car and noticed that Morgan had taken off her Peter Pan costume. Got her dressed again and figured out she took off her costume because she didn't like the shoe covers. Took off the shoe covers and put on some brown boots.

Finally ready to leave to the party.

Napoleon Dynamite (Tate) and Pedro (Ryan)

70's Guy (Jack)

Indian Chief and Peter Pan

Tiger Lily (Hadley) and her friends

Peter Pan (Morgan) Tinkerbell (Mia) and Capt. Hook (Griffin)

Decorating pumpkin sugar cookies

And the purpose of the party . . . Trunk and Treating.

And now we get to do it all over again in the morning for the school Halloween parade.

Leaves, leaves, leaves

We've had some serious windstorms these past few days and lots of leaves on the ground. It seems no matter how often I sweep or vacuum, I am continually stepping on leaves. Leaves on the kitchen floor. Leaves on the stairs. Leaves in the hallway and the kids' bedrooms. And this morning I even had to wipe leaves out of my washing machine while changing the wet clothes over to the dryer. And look at the pictures I discovered on my camera tonight. Kids-- my kids-- having the time of their lives jumping in leaves. Yip. Quite certain I've found the source of all of those leaves. Just look at these guilty faces.

And if jumping in the leaves wasn't enough enjoyment. The first snowfall of the season happened during this trampoline photoshoot. Captured on film by, I'm gonna have to guess since he's not in this picture, Jack.