Halloween 2010

We had a fun-filled, busy Halloween weekend this year! It blows my mind that it's already come and gone and Thanksgiving is just 3 weeks away!  Where does the time go?  

Our Halloween weekend started on Thursday morning when we carved pumpkins together as a family!  Well, actually it started Wednesday night at 8:15pm in the freezing cold, windy, darkness in front of Hy Vee -- the kids and I were out picking our pumpkins -- not quite the pumpkin farm, but we just didn't make it there this year!  Our family time together is very limited because of Mark and my work schedules and we knew we would have a short window of time to carve the pumpkins Thursday morning so I wanted to make sure we were ready to go Thursday morning.  Wednesday night we had stuff at church that didn't get over until later than expected so, oh well.  We survived! 

The boys were so, so, so, excited to carve the pumpkins.  They could hardly wait for Mark to wake up so we could do it (remember he works until 2am and has to be up most mornings by 7:30 so when I'm home we try to let him sleep until at least 10).  Well, I finally gave in and let them wake him up around 9:30 and we immediately started our project.  

Levi REFUSED to touch the pumpkin insides at all...

   

And Isaiah really didn't want to either, so he hardly helped.

And I'm just not good with a knife - so Mark ended up carving the pumpkins while I separated the pumpkin seeds and the kids were off playing somewhere... until the pumpkins were done.   As a way to keep the kids entertained Thursday before it was time, we had looked online for pumpkin ideas and Isaiah picked out a scary face and Levi picked out a kitty.  So that's what we got.  Mark did a great job!

Thursday night the YMCA had their annual Halloween Party.  We went last year and had a lot of fun so when a friend from work reminded me about it, we were sure to attend.  For the past month or so Isaiah has been saying that he was going to be a ninja for Halloween, well that Thursday he decided that he should go as a dragon slayer (we have a costume that is red with a dragon on it that came with a sword so we've called it the dragon slayer even though I'm not so sure Isaiah knows what that really means) and he thought that Levi should go in our dragon costume -- I didn't think that would be such a good idea!  But Levi had his own opinion, he wouldn't dress up as anything but Superman.  So when Isaiah found out that Levi was going to be Superman, he wanted to be Superman too.  Thank goodness we have 2 sets of Superman jammies that have capes on them! I must say, they looked so cute together.

I invited my mom to come along with us, and thankfully she did!  The boys were both in all different directions at the party, so excited!  Because we got to the party right as it started, we hardly had to wait in line for any of the fun games they had for the kids to play.

They had a few cute little projects for the kids to do too --  banana halves with mini chocolate chips to make ghosts and apple slices, peanut butter and marshmallows to make monster teeth.  Isaiah had fun with them - Levi, on the other hand, just ate a few apple slices.

We ran into Abby (my friend who reminded me of the party) and Isaiah's friend Erika.

The party started to get crowded and the kids had made it through most of the games -- and so we decided to sneak away.  We found a martial arts class where the kids were learning to use nun-chucks.  They both sat completely still and watched for several minutes.

Then we found a place to burn some energy.  Erika came to join in with the fun, so the kids ran for awhile and then it was time to head home.

Saturday Levi decided that he wanted to be Superman again, so he was.

And Sunday was the big day!  I had asked Isaiah what he was going to dress up for trick-or-treating and he looks at me and says, "I'm going to be a ninja, silly."  :)  I knew Isaiah would be too excited to wait for 6pm to go trick-or-treating, so we went to the mall to participate in their event at 3.  (Thank goodness for church in the morning and then lunch to occupy Isaiah or we may never have made it until 3pm!)  Levi wanted to be Superman again so here we are - a scary man, a witch, a ninja and Superman.

We made a stop at Mark's parents and then to my parents and then it was time...finally!  We went to the houses around my parents neighborhood.  After a handful of houses, Levi was saying, "let's go home."  But Isaiah wanted to keep going, and Levi has been extra clingy lately and didn't want to go home unless I was, so he lasted 20 minutes or so and then Isaiah decided that he was done too.

We went back to my parents house and the boys had fun passing out candy with my mom.

   At 7:30 Isaiah says, "okay, I'm reading to go trick-or-treating again."  Levi wanting to stick with me, wanted to come too, so the boys, my dad and I hurried back out. Isaiah said he wanted to go to every house.  So we went down another block and made it just a couple houses around the corner and he was done again.  We walked by several houses with their lights on, but Isaiah said he just wanted to keep walking home.

 We then made it home and got ready for bed.  Whew!  Happy Halloween!