Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Halloween

Halloween was such fun this year! It was the first year that BOTH kiddos really looked forward to it and watching their excitement build throughout the week made it even more exciting for me. They'd chosen their costumes long ago -- a ballerina for Madeleine and a lion for Harrison. However, after watching a Caillou episode earlier in the week where Caillou is a pirate for Halloween.....you can guess what Harrison just HAD to be! Thankfully, I was able to put together a quick makeshift pirate costume that made him very happy.

The first order of the day on Halloween was to carve our pumpkin. Madeleine helped draw the face and Matt started working on her "perfect" face. Madeleine's class had carved a pumpkin earlier in the week, so she knew exactly how this worked. Harrison, however, had no memory of last year and was quite interest in just how this was going to work. He kept trying to use his pirate dagger to "help" Matt!

I was completely surprised that Madeleine wasn't grossed out by the pumpkin guts! She sorted the seeds out for me to roast later and was such a great help.
Here's our finished pumpkin. Madeleine was proud of her face and if you look closely you can see the eyelashed she had to have on their. Obviously, this was a girl pumpkin! :)

The afternoon seemed to drag on that day! I can't count the number of times I was asked if it was time to get ready.....they were sooooo excited! Getting dressed took a good long time, since neither of them could stand still for long! Harrison kept dancing around the room and Madeleine was practicing her ballet moves. Finally they were ready. Madeleine was thrilled when I let her use my makeup to get really, really fancy! Here's the finished product....except for Harrison's hat which he only put on once he realized that it got him candy. Ha!
This year we were much wiser and knew they would probably poop out at the backside of the neighborhood which is the farthest point from our house, so we took some transportation with us. Here we are heading out.
Poor Matt had the job of pulling the wagon and loading them in and out at each house.
This year Madeleine knew just what to do and marched right up to each door and rang the bell. She'd yell out "trick or treat" and Harrison would echo it with either his "trick or treat" or a "happy halloween!" I'll never forget the sound of that, it was so sweet.
As we rounded the back side of the neighborhood, there's a stretch of just golf course/undeveloped land we had quite a treat and saw this:
We've seen lots of deer back there before, but never this close to us! They didn't even shy away when Harrison began yelling "HIIIIII" at them. I guess they're used to people getting close. We actually saw almost 10 deer in total, just another reason I LOVE where we live!
Once Harrison had a bit of candy in his basket, he was THROUGH! He just wanted to stay put in the wagon and let Madeleine keep going while he nibbled on his candy. The funniest part was that when Madeleine would ring the doorbell and the people would see Harrison sitting in the wagon, they'd bring the candy to him! He was livin' the good life that night.
Judging from the amount of candy the kids got I'd say this year was quite a success! We'll be eating candy for a long time around here. And, even though they both loved going door to door I think their favorite part of the evening was handing out the candy to the kids that came to our door, especially Madeleine.

Monday, November 2, 2009

New Favorite Website

If you live in NWA you need to check out this website! I have a feeling it's going to save me lots of $$$ in the future. :)

http://thefrugalmuse.blogspot.com/