Happy Halloween!!

We went to a Trunk-or-Treat activity last night and  MVP experienced his first taste of mooching candy off of kind people. It was a lot of fun. We all dressed up as golfers and, of course, MVP stole the show. For the first part of the activity, we ate hot dogs and played games at various booths indoors. MVP had his first bobbing-for-donuts experience and thought it was hilarious! He also liked popping balloons to find candy hidden inside. Once he figured out there was candy inside, he wanted to pop more and more! He wouldn't stand still long enough to get wrapped up like a TP mummy. It seems like he rarely stands still long enough to get a good picture--let alone with him both smiling AND looking at the camera. I know, I'm asking for waaaay too much.

 When we finished all the indoor games, we headed outside to do some trunk or treating. MVP caught on pretty quickly and really enjoyed walking up to people and helping himself to a handful (or two) to candy. There was one car that was quite elaborately decorated and the owners had dressed up their little dog too. MVP went up to the dog and started "sharing" his candy with the dog. He placed five or six pieces of his candy on the bumper of the car to give to the dog. What a nice kid!

 

We carved a pumpkin and MVP thought that was pretty weird. He liked reaching his hand in and pulling out the pumpkin's guts. Of course he would have been much happier if we had let him carve the pumpkin as well because he obviously thought he should be allowed to use the tools.

It's a lot of fun to participate in Halloween activities now that MVP is starting to understand them. We hope you have a wonderful Halloween too!!

Happy Halloween!

This was MVP's first Halloween and we had a lot of fun at a party on Friday night where we dressed up as a family. MVP was a bowler, I was a bowling pin and Andy was a bowling ball.

Then on Saturday, we went to our church's Trunk-or-Treat activity. Andy and I didn't dress up, but MVP was Trogdor (a dragon)!! Trogdor....Burnanating the people!!

On Sunday, MVP's babysitter stopped by to see if she could take him for a walk. When they came back, he was wearing a Halloween headband. Too cute!! Later on, she came back with some of her friends and wanted to see MVP in his costume.

A Halloween Treat

A couple months ago, my sister in law told me about GIANT marshmallows. She told me that you can take the giant marshmallows, stick a popscicle stick in them, dip them in chocolate and then roll them in nuts or crushed graham crackers. YUM!

This last week as I was trying to come up with a spooky treat to bring to a Halloween party, I conjured up a variation on the jumbo Smores idea. I decided to cover the marshmallows in Vanilla Flavored Coating (it's a lot cheaper than white chocolate) dyed with green or orange food coloring.







Then I decorated them--not without a lot of "help" from this guy. -->











Yesterday, I was pretty busy, so I only had a couple hours to complete them. So this is what I ended up with. Little Frankensteins and pumpkins. The pumpkins could be a lot cuter, I know, but I ran out of time. It was a mad dash to get out the door.

The Punkin Patch

We went to a pumpkin patch yesterday with Emma. We had a lot of fun. She was in charge of taking pictures and she did an absolutely fabulous job!! I was very impressed. She set up several different vignettes and had MVP sit there while she arranged the pumpkins and hay. These are two of my favorite pictures that she took. MVP was a little tired because it was time for him to take a nap, but he was a real trooper.

We then decorated some Halloween cookies so we are officially ready for Halloween.

Halloween Party

For Activity Days this week, we had a Halloween Party. Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good Halloween costume. I had the girls come dressed up in their Halloween costumes and we played several games and had a lot of sugar!


I invited a couple girls from the neighborhood and a few of the girls invited their friends, so we had about 15 girls show up. I now understand why all the parents readily left me with their kids, made comments about how brave I was and practically ran to their cars. The girls were excited for the party and were certainly in rare form.

We played a game where the girls had to find pumpkins that had been hidden around the house. The yellow ones were one point, the orange ones were 5 points and the black ones were 10 points. I was quite impressed that they found them all--and nothing was broken in the process. Then we played "GHOST" (similar to BINGO). They each got a "GHOST" card and had to fill in a variety of Halloween-type words in each of the 24 spaces. We also had a costume contest. The winners were a sock puppet and a bride. We then played the classic, TP Mummy game. As soon as a winner was declared, the room burst into sheer pandemonium.
There was TP flying everywhere. It was hilarious. We let them throw the TP like crazy and it looked like the inside of our house had been TP'd in the matter of about 10 seconds. We then took advantage of our orange kitchen walls and played pin the nose on the Jack-o-Lantern.
I was so grateful for Andy's help!! There was no way I could have organized all those girls by myself. If only there were a way to bottle all that energy...

We polished off the night with a variety of snacks--pumpkin-shaped, orange Rice Krispy Treats, cupcakes and candy. Then their parents came to pick them up. The last two girls went a little crazy making up movies. Andy had hooked up our camera to the TV and the girls all thought it was so great to see themselves on TV. They wanted to act out nonsensical movies that involved a lot of screaming and running around. When I asked them if they knew what blackmail was, they replied, "Yes, it's when someone sends you a letter and doesn't sign it." Yup. Keep screaming.