::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!

::a twist on tradition::

For the last four years Max & I have made delicious halloween sugar cookies. And then I always blog about it. Of course.
So after making it a tradition, and cooking them in four different kitchens in four different houses, we certainly couldn't miss a year just because we're tired and busy!
I was planning on making the cookies over halloween weekend--in fact I made the dough and refrigerated it on saturday. It was while doing that I realized that we had been infiltrated by a yucky fat mouse (which of course didn't help with the workload of the weekend.)
I was planning on finishing up the cookies sunday afternoon, but one of the families that we're good friends with in the ward invited us over for pumpkin pie. Who would refuse something awesome like that?
Come monday the dough was still in the fridge, and there were no delicious cookies to be seen.

We didn't give up. We modified the tradition. This weekend we got out the fall cookie cutters and made leaves, acorns and pumpkins instead of ghosts, cats & jack-o-lanterns.

Good thing I bought those leaf cookie cutters last year, that's all I can say! (Even though Kris thought one of the shapes was a christmas tree, silly boy.)

And we set to work.

It was a fun sunday afternoon activity for the family. This is the first time that Kris got to be involved, yay!

I was about 1000 degrees when we got finished, and I was exhausted. It was worth it though. They're delicious.
Max was my decorating helper again, of course. And somehow he managed to spill exponentially less sprinkles everywhere than even last time. It's nice that he's getting more coordinated--he doesn't listen much better, but he's at least got more hand dexterity!
It is funny to compare now with the first time we did it though--in 2006 I guess. He was only two and it was quite the undertaking to make the cookies together. He's much more capable now of course, and most of the time much more fun to hang out with.

It's fun to have traditions that let us see how time has passed and how fast little ones grow. And traditions that are tasty too. Yum.

::traditions, cookies, costumes::

Max and I have made frosted halloween sugar cookies for the last two years. For some reason he calls them christmas cookies. It doesn't make much sense to me, but that's my Max.
It's nice to have a tradition. Honestly it wasn't really a tradition until we did it last year. Once we had done it two years in a row I thought we needed to stick with it. Especially because Max really enjoys it. I posted about last year's cookie making here if you care to know more.
Kris and Max both were asking me all month when we were going to make the cookies. It's kind of a big job, doing it with Max, so I ended up kind of putting it off for a while. Plus we've been trying to eat very healthily, and I knew if there were delicious sugar cookies in the house I would gobble them all up.
So anyway, we didn't actually make them until halloween itself.

And that was a bit of a busy day. Max had school in the morning. Then we went trick or treating up and down our street (we live on a street with a lot of retail shops, and they were all giving out candy) and then we were supposed to carve our pumpkins and do a little more trick or treating and go to a party. Whew. Yikes.

So somehow we squeezed the cookies into our day. And we squeezed the cookie dough too.


Max was much more helpful than he's been the last couple of years, which was fun. But he kept trying to lick stuff, and kept sticking his hands in his mouth. I made him go and wash his hands every time. He probably ended up doing it about 20 times.

Can you see the flour on his nose? That's probably from smelling the cookie dough.

We made a super big mess of the kitchen. It was fun. And it's especially fun to lick the beaters, right? Isn't that what makes it all worth it?



Can you see the frosting on his nose now? Do you think he might have been smelling it? Hmmm....

After we cooked all the cookies it was time to go out trick or treating. Melissa and Grant came along with us.
Here's Max with his cute trick or treat bag Grandma made for him.

We went up and down the street and Max had a great time. It took him quite a while to actually say trick or treat though. He decided he was going to be shy for a while and wouldn't say a thing. I finally had to be a mean mom and tell him I was going to take him home if he couldn't shape up. He started talking. I was glad. It's kind of embarrassing to have a kid that big that won't even say thank you when somebody gives him a bunch of candy!

At the delicious little bakery at the end of the street they were giving out gingerbread pumpkin cookies. Mmmmm.


He got tons and tons of candy.
Grant enjoyed coming along and wearing his costume, even though he didn't get any goodies. Soon enough.


We got home and frosted the cookies. Max helped me to decorate them.
Here he is trying out the first one.



Approval, yay!

Here are some of the great pumpkin faces he made for me on the cookies.

Sad face (being enjoyed)

Mad face (sideways on the pumpkin) this one is a little hard to see.

This one is my favorite. I think it's so cute.

In the middle there is a happy face. I think it was his favorite. He likes happy faces.

During all of this action, Kris was at work. He did a rotation in the pediatric medicine clinic in the morning and had emergency care in the afternoon. He dressed up in an awesome costume.

Jimi Hendrix! You probably can't see it, but he photoshopped himself up a hospital name badge with Jimi's picture and name on it. He looked great. Actually, everybody in the pediatric dental clinic dressed up great. BUT he was the only one dressed up down in peds medicine. He said it was a little embarrassing. There he was walking around in a big wig with a plastic guitar and everybody else was just in scrubs. It makes me laugh.

After Kris got home he and I were totally exhausted. So we ended up skipping the party (which was too bad) and put off pumpkin carving. Then we took Max to trick or treat at a couple of our friends houses that were close. Then we put him to bed. He was a little sugared up, so it was nice to put him to bed.

So there you go. Some cookies, a little tradition and some fun costumes. That was our halloween!

Pumpkin Cookies

Last year Max and I made some delicious halloween sugar cookies. I thought it would be really fun before we started, naively, but unfortunately it turned into a pretty big ordeal. You know, flour all over everything, cookie cutters spilling to the floor and getting all smushed in with sugary sprinkles and frosting and dogs running around and etc. etc.
But the cookies looked great, and tasted great even though the dog ate about half of them when we left to trick or treat.
We were looking at pictures the other day and Max saw the cookie pictures and told me that he wanted to make pumpkin cookies again. So I was brave and told him we could do it. We did it on friday and we had lots of fun! It may be our new family tradition. Max cut most of the cookies out and helped me roll out the dough. He was a great help. These cookies ended up being whole wheat sugar cookies because it turned out that's the only flour we had. Sounds weird but they ended up tasting great.
We ate them. All of them.