Happy Halloween

I hereby declare that having Halloween fall on a Thursday is the trickiest thing ever.  Thursday falls after three jam packed busy weekdays and is on a teaching day for me.  It felt too early to prepare things last weekend, but of course once the week started, there was no time to prepare anything!  Yesterday afternoon we carved most of the pumpkins in between learning AWANA verses, doing homework, studying for spelling tests and practicing piano, but YaYa was off to oboe and to run a couple of errands with me and then had homework before church activities, so she ended up hastily finishing her pumpkin just minutes before trick or treaters converged on our front porch tonight.  We lit the last pumpkin right as I walked out the door with The Banana and Mr. TOF.

This year Dr. Peds was on call.  Fortunately he didn’t have to go in, but YaYa elected to stay home and hand out candy just in case.  I think she also relished in the quiet a little bit.  Mr. SP was invited to go trick or treating with a friend from school in a different neighborhood, and he had a super great time.  The Banana and Mr. Trouble on Feet went up and down the street with me.

Each kidlet had their own ideas of what they were going to be this year, and they all had plans for costumes.  Some of those plans changed 18 times before Halloween actually arrived, and because I was kind of swamped this week, I just let them do everything themselves.  I was actually feeling kind of guilty this morning that my kidlets went off to school with mismatched, crazy costumes (actually Mr. SP left without any costume at all because he forgot it here at home–but then he purchased vampire teeth at the reward store at school and popped those in his mouth for the parade and the missing costume didn’t phase him a bit because he loves vampire teeth).  Pieces of costumes were lost, missing, or never finished.  Certain necessary supplies weren’t purchased because no one told me to purchase them.  I was kind of a mess!  And then my husband pointed out that all the kidlets were doing just fine, and they didn’t need us to micromanage their costumes.  That was good advice.

Mr. SP pieced together a dragon costume using parts of costumes from Halloween past.  He was delighted in the end because Dr. Peds managed to scrounge up some blue face paint, and he ended up looking like a creepy blue and black dragon.

When he got home he ate a piece of red candy that made his tongue look a little bloody.  He was actually pretty thrilled about this.

The Banana found black clothes and YaYa helped her make cat ears.  She was frustrated about not having a tail, but in the end she ended up borrowing a black cat costume from a friend  and wore that.  She was so incredibly excited about all the festivities of the day that she could barely contain herself.  For example, her feet aren’t even touching the ground in one of these pictures because she was floating with excitement to get out the door and start trick or treating.

And then there was Mr. TOF.  Even though he’s a little guy, he had a distinct, strong opinion about what his costume would be:  a cowboy pet dragon.  Specifically, he was a cowboy pet dragon who liked to eat cookies.  After I smeared all the blue face paint on Mr. SP, Mr. TOF was fussing for face paint of his own, so YaYa obliged him and drew some chocolate chip cookies on each of his cheeks.  He gathered up the dragon suit and the cowboy hat himself, and let me tell you, he was cracking people up left and right.  “Happy Halloween!  Me a cowboy pet dragon,” he said carefully to every person he encountered.  

Upon arriving home, everyone stuffed as much candy in their mouths as they possibly could get away with before I cut them off.  In fact, I was on the phone with Grandma Robbie and Grandpa Ron, and distracted, so they probably ate twelve more pieces than I planned on them eating.  Twelve pieces each.  “You cut me off now?”  Mr. TOF asked me with sad eyes when I placed the phone back on the hook.

It was off to find a few toothbrushes and some pajamas after that.