How About Halloween

I've been sitting here looking through pictures from the past two months, trying to decide what to write about, when I came upon my pictures from Halloween. That seems a good topic to me, and so here we go.

Halloween was on a Saturday this year. At the school here, the kids are not allowed to wear their Halloween costumes to school because (I was told) some kids were showing up in things that were too scary/inappropriate for an elementary school, so they bagged the whole thing. They have, however, come up with work arounds. The week before Halloween was Anti-Bullying Week at the school. Each day the kids did something different to celebrate not bullying, I guess. One day they got to wear pajamas (put bullying to bed), one day they wrote thank you notes to people (recognizing/positively reinforcing good behavior?), and on Friday, they got to "dress up" as superheroes (because everyone knows superheroes are NOT bullies). This was pretty neat. It was fun seeing the kids, as well as the teachers and other staff, wearing superhero shirts and capes and the like.

For the kindergartners, they had a nursery rhyme parade, where all of the kids came to school dressed up as whatever nursery rhyme character they wanted. As soon as school started, the kindergartners were marched all around the school, into all of the classrooms, then they were marched outside where they did a few loops for the parents and grandparents and who's-it, then the kids and their family members went into the gym where the kids performed a bunch of nursery rhymes. It was adorable.

Finn was Wee Willie Winkie, which I was sort of worried was going to be an obscure character that no one would know. I needn't have worried. Wee Willie Winkie was one of the rhymes they covered in their unit, and was one they performed during their performance. A few other boys also dressed up as Wee Willie Winkie as well. (I totally knit Finn's "sleeping cap" the week leading up to this shindig.)

The Wednesday before Halloween, my stepmom texted and asked if she, my dad, and their dog could come down for Halloween, and for the soccer games that morning. Since we always love seeing family, we said, "Of course!" And down they came.

They met Josh at the field where Deacon was finishing his game, and Zeke was starting his. After watching those two play for a bit, they met me at the field where Finn was playing. The boys were so excited. After soccer we had some lunch and hung out until it was time to head over to our neighbor's for the annual pipe stem Halloween party/candy hand out spot. For costumes this year, we had 2 soccer players and 1 Star Lord (from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie).

After hanging out for a few minutes, Karen, Mickey (the dog), and I took the boys to Christine's to see them in their costumes, and then we started trick-or-treating. We had a lot of fun, except for when this guy came out:

Mickey did NOT like this guy at ALL. The poor dog went crazy as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man walked past us on the street. The dog also went crazy when he showed up at our pipe stem party an hour or so later when we were finished trick-or-treating. While trick-or-treating we met up with some friends and walked around with them a bit too, until Deacon decided he was done and wanted to go back. I took him back and left the other 2 with Karen, but shortly after we got back, they came back. Apparently they made it about 5 more minutes before deciding they were done as well.  Back at the party Finn displayed some awesome dance moves before deciding he was tired and wanted to go to bed.

Shortly thereafter, we ALL had decided we were tired and ready for bed.

While I was putting the kids in bed, my dad won the game they played at the party. I was gone for 20 minutes and he won a game! Josh said it was amazing. They put the names of horror movies/horror movie characters on each person's back, then each person had to guess who they were. The story goes, a sticker was put on my dad and the conversation went like this:

Dad: Am I a human?

Answer: No.

Dad: Am I a shark?

Answer: Yes.

Dad: Am I a white shark?

Answer: Yes?

Dad: Am I Jaws?

Answer: YES!

What?! Who goes from not a human to shark? Well played, Dad. Well played.

And how can we have a Halloween post without pictures of this year's pumpkins? I didn't get photos of each boy with their pumpkins this year because they basically told Josh what they wanted their pumpkins to look like, then walked away. So, Josh carved all of the pumpkins, I separated out, cleaned and cooked the pumpkin seeds, and the boys watched TV, the day before Halloween. Josh also took advantage of back to back soccer games to etch-carve the small pumpkins we bought. This year's theme: Minions!

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Halloween. I know that's a bit late, especially with Thanksgiving being next week (WHAT?!), but there it is. Happy Halloween!