Happy Halloween!

Thank goodness it's finally Halloween because I'm not sure these costumes would hold up much longer. They've been getting a lot of use.  But this is the big night and they put them on with warm clothes underneath and headed out.

Mom had to take a few pictures first.  Here they are checking each other out.

We headed next door to meet up with our trick-or-treating partners.

Making a scary face.  Colleen decided she need some vampire blood too and we shared some of Leo's.

Hitting the first house (our sweet neighbor Pamela) with the twins as well.

I headed home but had only a couple of trick-or-treaters come to our house.  Tom took the kids out but the twins and Colleen were keeping a quick pace.  Julia stayed with our kids and Tom, which was sweet.  It's a great excuse to trick-or-treat and get candy even when you're a little on the old side.

Here they are with their loot.  They ate a couple things and saved a couple things.  The rest is going to the Halloween Fairy, who picked out a couple of cute toys to trade for the candy.

Halloween is really a fun holiday with these kids.  Leo had me tell him the story of Frankenstein and his Monster over and over.  Serafina loved putting on her costume every time.  I'll probably leave it out year round so she can play dress up.  Tomorrow night Uncle Mike arrives.   Woo-hoo!

Preschool Costume Parade and Netapp Party

I caught the kids doing this right before we left the house today. Awww...they are so stinking cute.

Serafina's class had their Halloween party and parade.  I managed to get her to school, race Leo to school and make it back in time for the parade.  Leo was clearly a little jealous that Serafina got to wear her costume to school and get treats, since his school doesn't celebrate Halloween.  Those wacky Lutherans.

Little Ashley (on Serafina's left) wants Serafina to sit next to her during every circle.

The teacher went around and had each kid tell the class what he/she was dressed as.  

Then the kids paraded through the kindergarten class and elementary school office.  I don't have any pictures of the parade because she insisted on holding my hand the whole time making it difficult to take pictures.

Group picture.  Four out of the five boys in her class dressed as Spiderman.

I came back at the end of class to help distribute treats.  It's pretty much chaos to get all these kids to put  goodies in one another's bags.

The teacher had each kid come up and pretend like he/she was trick-or-treating at her door.  It was cute.  

Distributing treats.  

Later in the afternoon we went to Tom's work because they were having a Halloween party for all the families.  It was kind of crowded and not that fun, but why wouldn't we want to visit Daddy at work when he stuffs cupcakes into our mouths?

A couple years ago, I took Leo into a Halloween store searching for a last minute costume item.  There was an animatronic crawling zombie on the floor and it scared the living daylights out of him.  He was traumatized and talked about it for a long time after; I was wracked with guilt, of course.  When Tom said they had turned the cafeteria into a haunted house and there was a crawling zombie, I didn't want to take the kids over there.  Tom promised we could leave if the kids were scared and he wouldn't force them into anything.  Leo held my hand the whole time and did great.  He was interested in all the spooky stuff and even like the crawling zombie.

I rubbed the zombie's head.  All this Halloween hubbub and we haven't even hit Halloween yet.  Shew!

Halloween Dance Performance

Today was Serafina's last dance class of the session, so parents were allowed to watch.  Since we are so close to Halloween, the teacher encouraged the girls to wear their costumes.  Leo's school had an inservice day, so he was part of the audience.  He took some pictures with my phone during the class.  He was definitely bored towards the end, but he was such a good sport and encouraged his sister.  

Waiting for class to start.

We found the ladybug wand last week marked down 70%, so we had to get it.  Unfortunately, there was some wand drama during the class since she would put it down and the teacher would move it out of the way and when Serafina remembered it, she'd panic and want it back immediately.  

There were two Tinkerbells there today.  

The girls start in their tap shoes which is so much noisy fun.  

Then the girls switch to ballet shoes.  By then, Serafina had given up her wings and attnae.  

Stretching on the ballet bar.

The big finale.  

When we discussed next year's costumes, Leo said he wants to be Darth Vader (we currently watch a bit of Star Wars nightly) and Serafina said she wants to be a bee. I think it might be in part to the adorable bee costume the little girl in dance class was wearing today. Tom checked in with his East Coast family and it seems like everyone is doing fine during Hurricane Sandy.

4th Annual Halloween Party

This is an important event. It's not an elaborate event and most of the time, not much happens. But it's one of the three times a year (along with the Christmas cookie exchange and the Easter Egg hunt) that we gather with our friends that have been together since our first babies were actually babies. We usually do potluck - easy stuff, a bucket of chicken always makes an appearance. And for the Halloween party, it's all about pictures in the costumes. Once we are all assembled, we stick the kids in their costumes and try to snap at least one decent shot. After it's clear the kids won't tolerate one second more, we put them back in their real clothes (can't let them mess up their costumes when there are more dress up events this week).  We also hand out little treats because it's Halloween, after all.

Here's Leo looking in the bathroom mirror as I put his make up on.

Vampire!

Little ladybug sucking down a juice box.

Doug was a beekeeper.  Here he is prepping his outfit.  This was what he requested for his costume this year and his mom assembled it complete with little bees.

Riley as Tinkerbell, Serafina and Leo.

It is completely impossible to get all the kids in one picture and looking at the camera.  It doesn't matter how much candy you promise them.  Trust me, we tried.

Left to right: Addison as that princess from Brave that I can't be bothered to look up right now, Sophia as Cinderella, Elisa as a bunny, Doug, Riley, Serafina, Leo and Maia as the bee (to go with her brother the beekeeper).

Here's a shot where you can see Max in the middle.  I think he was a raccoon.

Katie wasn't feeling that great to start with, but she got extra moody during picture time and wouldn't take part.  She looked really cute though dressed a cow.  Here she is clinging to her mom's leg.

My kids.

Addison and Sophia, partners in princess-ing.

Lined up to trick-or-treat.  Sophia, Katie and Elisa left earlier since they are still on the mend after a family-wide cold battle.

Here I am passing out treats.

Katie with Max and Maia.

Cara distributing treats.

Tom was nice enough to join us and he took the trick-or-treating pictures.  He was really tired when we got home and he couldn't figure out why.  I told him it is exhausting to be around all those little bodies even if it's only for a couple hours.  There are a lot of kids.  

It also happens to be Doug's fifth birthday today.  They had a special family outing yesterday and today he got gifts from his friends.  We brought him some Legos; I asked his mom's permission first since it isn't always a welcome addition to your home if you haven't already be inundated with the tiny bricks.  She assured me his grandma had already bought him some, so she was grudgingly accepting Legos in their lives.  I couldn't very well bring Doug his present when I still owed Max his woefully overdue first birthday present.  I made sure I finished it up in time.  It was a lot of work, but I'm happy with how it turned out.  I took the picture next to Matchbox car to give a little perspective on his size.

Pumpkin carving

 Ah, the annual tradition of carving pumpkins.  Every year the kids are so excited to do it and I rope Tom into helping and we end up elbow deep in pumpkin goo and I wonder why the heck we go through this.  The kids love it, so I guess that's reason enough.

 Here's Leo right after we popped the top off his pumpkin.  He picked out a white one this year.

 Excited about carving pumpkins.

 She drew all over this little one and was upset when I refused to carve it, but those little ones aren't very carving friendly.

 Scooping out some guts with the special spoon Nana bought us.  It actually worked pretty well.

 Here was Leo's design.

 Serafina designing hers.

 The end results.

 I made a Princess Leia pumpkin since my kids are really into Star Wars right now.

 This is Leo's.  I was in charge of the actual carving so I tried to stay as true to his vision as possible.

 The kids wanted Daddy to make a scary face pumpkin so he created this, which is reminiscent of years past.

 Tom executed Serafina's design.  This is the pumpkin that Leo brought home from his field trip to the farm.  It had much tougher skin than the supermarket pumpkins, so Tom was a good sport to tackle this chore.

All lit up tonight.  I carved some little lines in the Leia buns with the hopes that some light might shine through, but it didn't work out.  Oh well.