Halloween Eve and Day

First things first. I wanted to show you a close up of my face (temporary!) tattoos from the party.  I just forgot to include them in my last post.  They were so cool!  Very easy also, with a big impact.  I want to do face tattoos every year now. 

We went out to breakfast on Sunday the 30th and then to church after that.  When we got home we jumped right in to cleaning and carving the pumpkins.  

But first, glamour shots.  We bought the little ones at the pumpkin patch and the big ones at Winco.  If we had bought the big ones at the patch the total would have been about $30.  At Winco it was less than $6.  Lesson learned. 

Individual glamour shots.

I cut the tops and then forced the kids to pull at least a few seeds out.  I did the majority of the scraping and scooping. 

Then Michael worked his magic on the carving.  

This year we had Bowser, Yoshi, a typical Jack and a celestial orb.  I did the orb with a drill. 

Our backyard is really, really dark.  We took them out there first so we could see just the glowing cut-outs.

Then we took them out to the front walkway so everyone could see.  Ginger thought she was a jack-o-lantern too. 

I thought for sure she was going to knock over the babies with this move.  But, she didn't. 

Our front yard has a big street light in it.  I actually really like it.  We have an uncovered window above the front door and the street light provides just the right amount of light so that the hallway isn't pitch black during the night, but we don't need to turn any lights on inside. 

Once a year it also provided the perfect amount of light for a jack-o-lantern photo shoot where you can still see the pumpkins but also the carving. 

Dinner for the kids that night was jack-o-lantern cheese quesadillas. 

I was totally lucky on Halloween Day to find Spencer's old Snoopy Halloween shirt tucked away waiting to be given to Elliott.  It was about 2 minutes before we needed to leave for school.  Spencer wore this shirt for, like, three years in a row.  If we hadn't done it this year Elliott would have totally missed it. 

After I took Elliott to school I met my friend Ellen for lunch.  Ellen is the social worker at my work and while I don't work on Mondays ever, she had an unexpected day off due to a water line breaking. 

She took this picture of her salad and beer, but those are my arms and iced tea in the background. 

I decided at the last minute to give the kids a ridiculous snack when they got home from school.  I needed to go to the grocery store for some dinner stuff after my lunch with Ellen, and this was in the front display.  I let the kids watch a Scooby Halloween cartoon and have this snack while I got tons of stuff done. 

I also remembered last minute that I've always wanted to make hot dog mummies for Halloween dinner. 

After dinner I did make-up on the kids for the third time in three days, they costumed up and we took last minute pictures. 

Then we were off to trick-or-treat. 

We stayed out for close to two hours and then everyone decided, all at the same time, that we were DONE.

The "after" picture. 

The yearly candy bowl picture. 

Elliott went to bed right after the candy bowl picture and then Michael and I examined and organized the candy while Spencer got ready. 

It only took me about 30 minutes to finish.  It's really sad (environmentally speaking) that once you remove all the wrappers it's really not THAT much. 

Halloween was exactly a week ago and now I'm feeling a little bit sad that it's all over.  At least I have Thanksgiving and Christmas on deck though.