Halloween festivities

{another freakishly long catch-up post}

Mid-October, we took a trip to the pumpkin patch for a preschool field trip.  It only ended up being 2 moms and 3 actual preschool kids, but they had a great time!

One of the favorite things to do was bounce on this gigantic air pillow!!  We probably wouldn't have to do anything else and the kids would've been happy!

Good thing they have tiny bums!  We squoze them in!

And my long 'ole legs barely fit!

Emily Thornes, Preston, Lea Oitzman

And these gigantic tube slides were the other activity that they spent the most time on!  They must've climbed the stairs a hundred times!

Hayden picked her own mini punkin

This fresh kettle corn was TO DIE FOR!!!
I could've eaten the whole bag in one sitting!

Surely the sign of a successful field trip!

Ward Halloween party

This year, we had....

a beautiful butterfly

a scary {glow-in-the-dark} skeleton

a gorgeous Greek goddess

the fearless Zorro

and a RED ninja

 Hayden waited patiently until her number was called in the cupcake walk.

Matt has insisted that we dress up the past couple years and this year, we were Popeye and Olive Oyl.  Our kids had no idea who these characters are!  It's fun to dress up but I always feel a *little* bit awkward...

This year, we carved pumpkins at Grandma LeBaron's.

 The finished products

Since Halloween fell on a preschool day, Preston got to dress up in his costume and bring a fun snack to sharel!

We had to make a trip to the lab to get Hayden's blood drawn {again}.  We had a little photo session right outside.  Haha!

 Here she is post-draw, poor little thing.

Holiday lunches are always fun!  I sent this with the big kids to school, too!  Pumpkin chocolate chip muffin, baby carrots, monster teeth (apple slices, PB, marshmallows) and little orange Jello pumpkins.

Theeeeeeeennnnnnn, this for an after-school treat!!!  Oh my!  It's called Monster Munch and I could NOT stop eating it!  Popcorn, peanuts, Reeses Pieces, candy corn and vanilla almond bark.

Halloween night is always an inner struggle- I love taking my kids out trick-or-treating, but we have an awesome trick-or-treating neighborhood and I want to be able to hand out candy to all those cute trick-or-treaters!   In years' past, Matt and I have both gone out, then passed out candy when we got home from taking the kids around, but by that time, we don't get as much trick-or-treating traffic.  So this year, I decided I would stay home to hand out candy while Matt took the kids trick-or-treating!  I couldn't BELIEVE how many kids we had come by!!

When I asked how she did, he said he just kept handing her sucker after sucker after sucker!!
Hence her messy face and crazy stickiness!!

Mama witch!

***tangent: When did Halloween become so EXPENSIVE??!  7 people x $15-$30 per costume = out of control!  The kids are SO indecisive!  And I'm starting to despise whoever designs costumes.  Could they get the sizing somewhere in the near vicinity of what they label it as??  Either it's two sizes too small, or one piece is HUGE while another piece is TINY.  What's the deal?  It can't be that hard...  Then there's the bags candy and glowsticks x 2, for the ward Trunk or Treat then Halloween night.  I think I'm becoming a little bit of a holiday grinch in my old age! ;)