It's been a whirlwind of a week, with all the Halloween activities for the kids both at home and at school. Hyrum's preschool class had its annual field trip to the pumpkin patch a few days ago (around here you have to wait until the last minute to get your pumpkins or they'll rot in the hot humid weather).
I must admit I was happy to bid adieu to the pumpkin patch, knowing that it was our last visit to the Hawaiian variety of pumpkin patches. After battling the heat, humidity, dust, bugs, and rotted pumpkins for 4 years straight, I'm looking forward to pumpkin hunting next year in crisp autumn weather in Virginia!
Looking on the bright side, at least they have a pumpkin patch to go to here, so for the sake of the kids I'm grateful for that. They have always had a great time coming to the patch to pick out their own pumpkins, and for the first half hour or so they're in high spirits. After that, the humidity takes its toll and it's tears and tantrums until we get home. I've learned not to wander more than a half mile away from our van, because being several fields away from the parking area in search of a non-rotted pumpkin with 2 or 3 exhausted kids who won't/can't walk plus trying to carry 3 pumpkins is not the happiest of circumstances!
This year they had a large selection of pumpkins piled up near the entrance to the patch, so that was really nice. Hyrum really wanted to go out into the field too, so I humored him until he was satisfied that the ones left out in the fields were left there because they were rotten. Then we went back to the piles of squash at the entrance and eventually decided on a few.
Here's Hazel searching for just the right one...
"Oh, I give up, Mom," she says. "Can you choose one for me please? Besides, I don't even know what these things are for!"
Here are Hyrum and Eliza's pumpkins, didn't they do a great job? They both drew out the designs ALL by themselves, and Eliza cut hers out all by herself using the little child-safe saw you can buy. I was really proud of her, considering last year she didn't want anything to do with it. She still refused to clean the pumpkin out by herself (it was a little stinky because there was a little spot of rot on the inside, so I guess she's excused!) but at least she enjoyed carving it this year. She even made glasses, can you see them? Hyrum did most of the cutting by himself too, except for part of the mouth.
Here's how they looked in the dark. Sorry for the blurry pics, by the way. I thought I could get away with not using a tripod, but I was wrong!
Here's another food idea I got from FamilyFun.com. Mummy pizzas! I used toasted hamburger buns instead of the english muffins. The white mummy wraps are strips of string cheese. This was our quick dinner in the flurry of trying to get everyone ready for trick-or-treating and the house staged to receive the trick-or-treaters.
Halloween night. This was Hyrum's 3rd costume of the season, as he refused to wear his banana costume at the preschool party, so his teacher let him pick out a costume from their emergency inventory. He chose to be a dinosaur that day, but on Halloween night he was Bob the Builder. No sewing involved for that one, which was a very good thing!
Hyrum the dinosaur. Note his long legs sticking out of the short costume...he was barely able to squeeze into this one, but he made it work. Hurray for Ms. Chris, who circumvented a major meltdown by letting him wear this costume instead of the banana one that I worked so hard on. (sigh) Ah, well. At least I have pictures!
For those of you who didn't see Hyrum the Banana Boy in my previous post, here he is. Who can blame the poor kid for not wanting to wear 2.5 feet of stuffed banana on one's head?
At Eliza's new school, they have an annual mask parade for Halloween. Everyone was supposed to make a mask at home, and this is what Eliza came up with. She wanted to be a happy candy corn witch, and although I helped her with the paper mache part, she painted it all by herself.
There is also a door decorating activity every year, and I helped Eliza's class make their poster. Each child wrote their name on a ghost and glued pompoms on it, which they had a lot of fun doing. It was pretty faded by the sun by the time I took this photo, but it gives the general idea.
Like most projects, this took much longer than I thought it would, due to drawing and cutting out all the letters, then embellishing them. The kids were very excited when they saw it, though, so that made it all worth it.
Here's a sweet picture of Hyrum, with messy hair (he won't let me cut it because he's afraid of the hair clippers), chocolate on his face and all. We were waiting for Eliza's parade to start and Hyrum wanted me to take his picture.
While I'm on the subject of costumes, I thought I might as well post what the kids were last year. They really wanted to be ghosts, so here they are at the preschool cheesing it up.
...and there's baby Hazel just a month old in her ill-fitting ghost costume! It's so amazing to see how much she's grown in the past year. I still think of her as my tiny little baby, but now she's walking and almost talking. Don't grow up so fast, Baby Boo!
I almost forgot to post some pics of the mummy wrapping game we did at the party earlier this week! I didn't have very strong toilet paper (oops) so it kept breaking while they were trying to wrap eachother.
The moms had to step in to help, but that darn TP was just not cooperating.
This is as good as it got that day. Next time I'll definitely choose which TP to use more wisely! Most of the kids still had a great time, if for no other reason than to have an authorized opportunity to unroll toilet paper without being chided for wasting it!
Okay, last picture of the day...this was the extent of my halloween costume this year! I didn't have time to come up with costumes for Steve and I, so I just made this necklace out of Sculpey clay and sprayed it with clear gloss. I offered to make one for Steve, but for some reason he wasn't too interested....
I hope you all had a happy and safe Halloween, and may you have more self-discipline than I do with all the trick-or-treating goodies in the house. I have a serious problem with chocolate, especially if it's individually wrapped and in bite-sized pieces. I always think to myself, "Oh, what's one more little piece going to hurt?" And at the end of the day there are many, many empty wrappers in the trash. I should have Steve hide it from me so I don't know where it is, but then I might have severe withdrawal symptoms and go berserk. So I better go have another piece to keep me sane. :-)
You may have had a blast yesterday!
Wonderful costumes!!!!
Posted by: celia | November 01, 2008 at 04:21 PM
Wow. Your kids are so lucky to have such an energetic, creative Mom! Great pictures too! Love the Halloween dinner. We had pizza too, but not the cute variety like you made. What a good idea!
Posted by: Jane | November 02, 2008 at 10:37 AM
Hi! I am friends with your SIL Michele and she told me about your cute ghost costumes. My 3 year old is asking for a ghost costume and I was wondering if you could pass on any tips to how you made those. So cute!! Thanks for your time!
-Rachelle
Posted by: rachelle F | October 04, 2009 at 08:29 PM