Thursday, November 4, 2010

Our Happy Halloween

We had quite the fun-filled Halloween weekend! Madeleine had Friday off from school for parent conferences & Mimi & Grandad were here too! The kids have been looking forward to Halloween this year and counting the days until they could go trick or treating. I added a few more fun activities too & we ended up with a full weekend.

First off was making some Halloween cookies! This year I bought cookies (hey, 3 kids & a super-busy Matt -- you do whatever is easiest!) and they were perfectly happy with them. And, they were pretty yummy, too.

Saturday morning we went to our local donut shop for their special halloween donuts! They make these every year on Halloween I discovered & we'll definitely be adding them to our annual Halloween fun!
Saturday morning I spent 3 hours volunteering at Madeleine's school, helping park cars for the Razorback game while the kids had some fun with Mimi & Grandad.
Late that afternoon, we loaded up the car & headed for Trunk or Treat at our church. This year our church opened the event up to the community & we hoped for a turnout of around 400. Well, we underestimated the event just a wee bit & had over a THOUSAND people come to the event! It was amazing to see that many people in our parking lot & what a powerful ministry to our community!
My friend AJ & I have become part of our Land Of Promise ministry team & we set up a car & handed out information about our nursery classes/ministry. I wish I had scanned in what we handed out -- it was so awesome! (And, I can say that since I had nothing to do with the design --our very talented friend Whitney did it all!) But, the information I had was gone in just a matter of minutes since we thought printing 100 was going to be enough. Ha!
Our theme was a pumpkin patch & we created one with the pictures of all the kids in Land of Promise. Here's a picture of our car towards the end of the night when the kids had commandeered the trunk for themselves. :)
After making the rounds, both Madeleine and Harrison we excited to help me hand out candy. The only problem was that they like to give out handfuls and we were running a bit short due to the underestimation of people that would attend.
I would never, never have survived the night without my mom & dad being there to help out. Matt was given tickets to watch the Hogs play & he was well deserving of a night out. It would have been impossible to watch the kids & hand out candy.
Sunday morning we did church & headed home to carve our pumpkin & roast the seeds. The roasted seeds are always Matt's favorite part of the day. :) But, before that could begin, I had to get a picture of Charlotte in her super-cute Halloween dress.

Off to pumpkin carving! Matt did the carving and offered to let the kids clean out the inside. I love the look on Harrison's face in this picture. I think we can rule out surgeon as his future career. ;) However, this is always on of Madeleine's favorite parts. She's not grossed out by the "pumpkin guts."

While Matt finished carving the face, the kids played with some pumpkin pie playdoh I'd made. It made our house smell sooo yummy while it was baking & it smelled good even after it was finished. I warned them that although it smelled good, it wouldn't taste good, but that didn't stop both of them from trying it!!! And, yep, it tasted baaaaad.


This was such a hit, I'm definitely going to be making gingerbread playdoh for christmas!

Here's the finished product. While it may not win any awards, I think it looked good and the kids were pretty proud of it.
Finally it was time to trick or treat. Madeleine decided weeks ago that she wanted to be a black cat. She was the cutest thing! Harrison was supposed to be a pirate, but had a last minute change of heart & firmly decided he was going to be a Thomas the Train. It was mimi to the rescue to find & bring us a Thomas outfit. :)

Since it was such a nice night, we put Charlotte in the stroller and walked around the neighborhood together. She loves her stroller & was quite content to just sit back and relax as we walked.

By the time we were almost finished I looked down and saw Charlotte sound asleep in her stroller. Such a sweet baby.
It was a great Halloween for all of us! And, now, on to Christmas!

No comments: