All Things Halloweenish

I'm not gonna lie, Halloween is not my favorite holiday. And to top it off, this year I had the brilliant idea of starting a No Sweets November group 30 days before Thanksgiving so I didn't eat a single piece of candy or a single treat on Halloween or for 5 days before that! The hardest part was skipping the yummy homemade pumpkin and apple treats that we make each year... ah well. At least I am beating my sugar addiction, right??

The kids were excited about their costumes! Once they settled on them of course. Jenna has said she was going to be Elsa since last Halloween. Caleb wanted to be a Ninja Turtle, so Kent bought him that costume, but then he flipped back and forth to just being a regular ninja until the day of when he went with the Ninja Turtle after all. Natalie wanted to be Molly the American Girl, but after searching piece by piece online the costume was going to be like $90. Nope. So she went with a Japanese Princess instead, inspired by the beautiful kimono her cousin brought back from her trip to Japan. Almost all month we though Seth was going to be Calvin and I would be Hobbes, but at the last second Kent bought Seth a Batman costume that turned out adorable. 

Natalie is loving her Activity Day Girls group! Here they are at their Halloween activity!

Here is Natalie on the night the package with her costume "FINALLY" arrived! 

We also got a package from Kent's parents with a cute Halloween card for each of us. 

The ward Halloween party was actually a neighborhood party held at the church and it was SO DIFFERENT than any other we have been to in any other place we have lived. 

After a soup potluck and some cookies they crammed all the kids into the primary room and then they sang a little halloween song and then we left... because it was over. On the drive home Caleb suggested we visit California for next Halloween. LOL! 

We did a science experiment in conjunction with carving pumpkins. We used the scientific method to find out how many seeds were in each pumpkin. Want to make a guess? I'll say Natalie's amount at the end of the post. =o]

Natalie literally almost threw up as we were scooping out the seeds and goop, so I let her just rinse and spread out the seeds while I did the rest of hers poor girl. Caleb and Jenna on the other hand went at it!

Of course Natalie chose an owl pattern. 

Caleb chose a bat. 

And Jenna said she just wanted a little smiling girl, so I helped her carve hers. Kent said she insisted on buying a "cute little pumpkin" instead of a big one like the other kids when he got them at the grocery store. We have been to so many farms lately we were fine with not going to a patch to find them!

We had a Halloween party with our Friday Friends. I will write more about it on my homeschool post for the month, but it was fun and we had a great turnout!

On Halloween morning we discovered that we didn't have any orange food dye, or even red to make orange, so we had greenish pancakes instead. This is Seth's probably 7th one that he finally couldn't shove down anymore of. 

We baked pumpkin seeds as usual. Yum!

We had HUGE fuji apples and so I sliced them crossways and we used cookie cutters to make halloween shapes at lunch. Super fun!

They loved seeing the star and I couldn't believe that I hadn't shown it to them before!

We made our traditional caramel popcorn, which smelled delicious and everyone else enjoyed!

Then we made dinner in a pumpkin for the first time. Everyone was super wary of it, and in all honesty it probably could have baked for ten more minutes but we needed to get a move on so I left well enough alone and served it. I loved it and ate it as leftovers at lunch for days after, but everyone else ate their duty and no more. 

Then it was time to get into costumes!

So fun!! 

Hooray for costumes!

And hooray for jack-o-lanterns!

They were all so happy and excited for our first experience trick or treating in Utah. And I do have to say in my limited experience, it was the best. I always do one short stint with the littlest and then come back to hand out candy so I can't speak for Kent or the kids, but it was just so fun to have EVERYONE participate and be out and about together! In the past we would go to the few houses around us with their lights on, and get maybe 20 kids at our door, but not this year! We hit up everyone, and we handed out more than 3 Costco bags full of candy!!

We went with some of our neighbor friends. They are such cute girls!

After once around our cul-de-sac and the next one over to get the experience, Seth and I headed home to man the porch. 

Seth enjoyed his "pop". 

And running around like "bat-an"!

I also made some hilarious videos of him talking like a monster ha ha!

Then the kids and Kent brought Jenna home and went out for round two!

Jenna and Seth LOVED handing out the candy just as much as going trick or treating themselves. I got some adorable footage then too. 

I managed to get the younger two in bed somehow despite more people coming and RINGING THE DOORBELL. Our porch light was off, but our other outside lights are all automatic so people just kept on coming! This one dad worth mentioning was totally trashy and his poor baby may or may not have even been wearing a costume but I couldn't tell. Jenna had given him seriously like 4 pieces of candy and he said "oooooh! I really want those gummy bears though! those are daddy's favorite!" and I kind of laughed but he looked up at me and said "no i'm serious. come on! give me those gummy bears" in this super whiney voice. I reached over and put the package in his bucket and he laughed and walked away. I should have given him two or three packages of the gummy bears because apparently he needed them real bad. WOW, right? The entitlement of some people!

Kent and the older kids got home and of course had to sort everything out and trade and try some. That was my favorite part as a kid! Kent was such a fun dad and got them glow stick bracelets and such to wear again. They all enjoyed them!

When all the kids were finally in bed I had some of my special treat- this no sugar added apple cider! SO GOOD!!

Now we can move on to the REAL holidays we love! =o] 

(Oh and Natalie dutifully counted 665 seeds from her pumpkin!!)