::the rest of halloween::

Last sunday was so nice. Our chapel is being remodeled, so for now the sunday school hour is eliminated. Church was only two hours and it started at 10AM instead of 11AM. So after church we felt like we had all day long to do stuff.

We always make delicious fabulous halloween sugar cookies every year--sometime around halloween. Sometimes after. So we went to work making those. And while we were doing that Kris and Max started working on Jack'O'Laterns.
Lots of pictures:



Are those TEETH or what?! He looks a little like a snaggle-toothed pumpkin face himself.


Lots 'o guts in those big pumpkins. Can't you just smell the slimy smell?

Not sure if Kris is giving commands or about to sneeze here.

Max picked out a very cool pumpkin, and luckily for him it wasn't especially hard to carve. I was afraid it would be for sure.



Yes, Kris is making the best pumpkin ever.

And my work. It was a ton of cookies becuase we gave some away. I got pretty tired by the end.


Sandy was sleeping for most of our escapades, but eventually he woke up and was HUNGRY as usual. He wanted cookies. Instead he got cheerios.


Cheerios and water. Mmmmmmm.
More of my finished product:

And some of the boys' finished products:

All of them:

Sandy's on the far right--Kris made it. Awesome, right?
Mine is next. Kris cleaned it for me and I carved the face.
Then Kris's of course. Love it!
Max's is on the far right but you can't see it in the picture. It was almost impossible to get a candle to work in there because the gourd was so short!
So here's a photo of the huge candle from my pumpkin trying to light up his adorable one.

And there you go. That was the rest of our halloween--besides the eating dozens of cookies and lots of candy part.
We were pretty proud of ourselves for getting it all done. Happy Halloween!

::i see by your outfit that you are a jedi::

"I see by your outfit you are a jedi too....we see by our outfits that we are both jedis, if you get an outfit you can be a jedi too. Duh duh."

Anyway, here are our outfits.
These are pictures from the ward "trunk or treat" on saturday night.
We had loud star wars music and we used our big black car that reminds us all a bit of a spaceship.

Max is very serious with his obnoxious blaster as Luke the x-wing pilot. He still hasn't seen much of Star Wars, so don't grill him on any details. But we're working on that.


The whole family's theme was built around one thing. That Sandy had to be an ewok. I saw the costume online at some point and knew we had to do it.
And it was perfect. He was the most adorable ewok I've ever seen.



If you want to squish him and squeeze him that's ok. I don't know how you could want to do anything else!
He was a pretty good sport about his hood and only started pulling it off at the end of the night when he was pretty cranky. He's just a good sport generally--we're lucky. And he's adorable of course.

So that's us. We have some more halloween fun to report on tomorrow. But HAPPY HALLOWEEN tonight!

::::

Happy Halloween weekend!!!


(What is that face exactly?)

We're busy busy with all the mandatory halloweeny activities. I'll try to report on some of the tomorrow!

::crazy halloween craziness::

Yesterday (saturday) was an insane day of halloween activities.
Having the holiday fall on a sunday is a bit of a pain because instead of just one fun day of festivities, it's basically the whole weekend. But oh well. It's just those of us whose backs get tired, and the little ones who get oversugared and overtired that suffer I guess.
Anyway, we started the day by taking Max to his karate class--a preliminary strike against the later sugar high. I was hoping a little exercise would do him good.
Then Kris and Max came home, got ready, and headed out to the school halloween carnival. I opted out of that activity and stayed home.


(yes, Max looks like he's wearing some of those hillbilly teeth--that would be a great part of his costume--but unfortunately no, that's his real mouth. He keeps making this weird nerdy smile these days.)
Luckily for me I got to find out we had a mouse in the kitchen while they were gone. I was trying to be productive and was hoping to whip up batter for our traditional cookies. I got into the utensil drawer and found that a bunch of them had been chewed up. Ewwwwwww. Then I got to clean everything in the drawer. It was really fun, and a truly lovely addition to the day.

Off they go--it really looks like they're headed off into the savannah for a safari, doesn't it?

Then after they came back from the school party we had the church trunk or treat. Our costumes were really built around this event--We were explorers in an awesome old land rover. We had africanish music playing from the car and a fun fuzzy dog that we caught on our adventures tied in the back of the car.
And the best part? Moustaches. (Except me--all I had was a hat, but it worked.)



"I say, where can I go to shoot some big game??"

Kris won 2nd place in the costume contest. It wasn't too hard, considering that he was one of three men that dressed up. Plus the mustache is awesome.

The explorer and his beast.
I think the following three photos are pretty funny--sorry if it's mustache overkill.



Max looks like he has a little mustache envy.

We bowed out of the ward party early because we had to go buy all sorts of mouse traps and stuff--the thought of a mouse running through my kitchen was not doing a lot for me.
Then we went to our last event--we have a family in our neighborhood whose kid is in Max's class, and they bring all three of their kids into our office. They're awesome people and we really like them, so we couldn't miss their party even though we were SO tired.
So we went for an hour. By the time we were done there Max was in full meltdown mode. He was a floppy, screaming, exhausted disaster. So we went home. And my back was glad to be home too.
It was a crazy day. Crazy halloweeniness. And we didn't even get our cookies made or our pumpkins carved........

::school halloween parade::

At our last school Max wasn't even supposed to wear a costume, much less did they do anything to celebrate halloweeen. Out here in the west, however, it appears entirely kosher to go all out for halloween at school.
In fact, they spent at least the whole week leading up to it making crafts, playing games and learning about halloweeny things. The halls of the school were very festive with cute holiday art.
On friday the school had it's annual halloween parade. As usual with school, nobody told me when or where it would be until the day before, and I had to change some doctor's appts around and stuff, but I made sure to be there.
Max was a jedi for school--Luke I guess.

It was cute to see all the kids in their costumes. Also, I've been able to spend a little time in his classroom, so I'm finally getting to know the kids in his class which is nice too.

They lined up out in the hall and waited for all the big kids to parade past. And wow there were tons of kids that came by. I really didn't realize how dang big the school was until I saw the parade.

They had a hard time waiting their turn.
And though Max looks like he wasn't having that much fun, I have proof that he was:

See? He smiled. I'm not sure who he was smiling at, but he smiled.
They joined up with the end of the parade as it went by and we all marched out to the athletic field. I took up the rear to make sure nobody got lost, and it was a good thing I was there, because there were at least two kids that I had to literally push most of the way so that they would keep up. Classic 6 year old stuff.

There they went onto the field where they all lined up for a while and stood around. I'm not sure why, but oh well.
We took some pictures.
Of Luke Skywalker & Luke Skywalker especially.

I don't have any idea why they look so solemn. They definitely weren't!


Now that's more like it.

I like it when they get into character.

That's Max's teacher there on the right looking pretty groovy. He was so confused on why the teacher on the left would dress up "like a boy!!"

Then we all walked back to the school into the chaos of class halloween parties. I stayed and helped out and by the time it was over I was exhausted. Luckily friday is a short school day, so we got to leave at around noon. I think the kids had a great time. It was quite the kick-off for the entire weekend of halloween activities that we had to look forward too.
As of saturday night when I'm writing this I'm all halloweened out. Fun stuff, but you can only do so much.
But anyway, the parade was so fun. Lucky sugared up kids.

::spooky box::

Max came home with a special homework assignment last week. He was supposed to come up with some sort of "spooky box" to display in his classroom during halloween week. It was supposed to be a diorama in a shoebox, using whatever materials he wanted.
So Max and I brainstormed and came up with what I think is a pretty good idea. A spooky ocean box.
We painted our shoebox last night and then this afternoon all three of us worked together to make spooky cranky ocean animals.
Then I glued everything into place.

(Max is working on some other self-directed project here. Suddenly plenty to do when there's homework!!)
Here's the box, I think it turned out super fun looking.

I like the two headed snakes slithering along the ocean floor amid Kris's seaweed.
I'm frightened of this shark--he looks like he would easily bite somebody's leg off. And you can't see the fish he's chasing very well, but that poor fish looks pretty dismayed.

An awesome group of ghostly jellyfish.

Snakes hiding behind the anemones.

Successfully (and definitely oddly) spooky I think. He turns it in tomorrow, I think his teacher will like it! She'd better anyway.