Halloween

After all the build-up, it was finally Halloween! We carved our pumpkins...we ended up with a batman pumpkin and a robot pumpkin, but no pictures of them lit unfortunately.

Not only did we have a lot of pumpkins that we bought or got for free, but we also had several from our garden! We did not even plant pumpkins, but since we put our pumpkin remains in our compost pile last year, we had volunteer pumpkins grow out of our compost pile this year. It was a great surprise that the kids loved! They didn't get very big, but here is our garden pumpkins....

All our pumpkins, except for the two big ones we carved...

Halloween morning they kids got dressed up in another set of costumes. Ben had a party at school and I took the girls to a party at our church. Ben chose Batman for school, Abbey was Ariel again and Juliette was Dora the Explorer!

Halloween evening, Ben finally went as a mummy. He had been asking for months to be a mummy, so I made him this costume. I was pretty proud of it because it involved sewing, which I simply do not do (a button comes off of pants and I usually deem the pants useless rather than sew the button back on)!

Our final Halloween costumes...Dora the Explorer (with backpack and Boots), Cinderella, and a mummy!

Dora shows off Backpack!

We decorated the wagon to be the "doom buggy" to give the kids a lift when they got tired.

Then our friends came over to trick-or-treat. Who would win in a fight...a mummy or a pirate?

Look at this crew!

After Juliette got some candy in her bucket, she preferred to sit in the back of the doom buggy and just eat her candy.

Gavin joined her - what a cute pumpkin!

It was a lot of fun! It is hard to believe that we are now into the holiday season, but I would say that Halloween was a blast this year so I am looking forward to some fun holidays coming up!

Halloween Part 3

Friday night we went to a "trunk or treat" event that Arlington Heights puts on. Basically, local companies come and give out candy (and their fliers) to the kids. We had never been before, but we were pleasantly surprised - it was a huge event! The kids each came home with a huge bag of candy and little toys. Besides all the candy, they had games set up and big jump houses too. It was a lot of fun and well worth the $5 it cost to get in. This time, Juliette went as a frog. She would crouch down really low and jump as high as she could while yelling "Ribbit!". It was very cute.

Ben went as a penguin. It was pretty small on him, but he didn't seem to mind.

Abbey went as Cinderella again.

Here they are, ready to go!

It was a lot of walking, and our little froggy got pretty tired, but she was a trooper.

We all had a lot of fun. And, we ran into a bunch of people we knew. There were about 300 kids there, so we were surprised when we ended up in line right behind the triplets in Ben's class! So that was a lot of fun to go around with them. And we saw two girls from Abbey's dance class too!

The princess and the frog at the end of the night.

Then this strange man followed us out to the car...I didn't know who it was...

Juju was pretty done by the end of the night, but we all had a great time!

Halloween Part 2

Thursday night was a special night as Uncle David was in town for work and stopped by to visit. So Aunt Domi and Caroline came up and we went to a Halloween event at a library close to us. Unfortunately, we went to the wrong branch at first, so by the time we got to the right branch we missed the stories, but they did have a lot of fun activities set up that the kids enjoyed. Here are Ben and Caroline having fun at toss the ball in the pumpkin. Notice Ben is wearing a Buzz Lightyear costume this time (a gift from Uncle Phil and Aunt Sandy for his birthday last year...if you look closely, you can tell it has been used a lot! And it is getting pretty small on him - look at the legs! But he doesn't care - loves it anyway!).

Abbey was a fairy this time. We combined her ballet leotard and tights with a tutu she got for her 2nd birthday from Aunt Domi with wings, a head band and a belt that we got from Aunt Theresa (it used to be her dog Libby's costume, but we altered it to make it work)! I think it turned out pretty cute!

Juju was a lady bug this time - a costume Abbey wore when she was 15 months and Juliette wore it to one event last year as well. It was pretty small on her this year, so it might be retired from our collection soon.

Cute cousins making witches hats.

What a great looking group!

Then it was back to our house for some pizza and shenanigans with Uncle David!

And some more costume changes...have you ever seen a penguin ride a horse?

We are so glad Uncle David came to hang out with us for the night! (Notice Abbey is now in a Snow White costume.)

Yay Uncle David!

Halloween Part 1

Just like birthdays, we tend to celebrate special events for at least a week and Halloween is no different! So we have a lot of Halloween festivities going on and the kids love it. I know I have mentioned this before, but our kids absolutely love dressing up and pretend play. We have quite a collection of costumes too from old Ben costumes from previous Halloweens, costumes given to us from Aunt Domi, and costumes given to the kids for various birthdays/Christmas...and yet they are still asking for more costumes for Christmas! They are all in costumes at least once a week, but probably more often than that. We have quite a variety of costumes too, from different animals to several princesses to almost all of the major super heroes. So when Halloween rolls around, we have a lot to choose from just from our own playroom. I try to make the most out of our collection by encouraging the kids to wear something different to each event, so you will see a lot of different stuff over the next few posts!

To start off the festivities though, Abbey got to dress up for dance class and her first costume choice was Ariel!

The wig got to be a little difficult to dance in though so she took it off. Then they paraded around the parent waiting room to show off the costumes. There were 3 Ariel's in her class, but they all had different costumes. One of the mom's told me that a store clerk told her that Ariel was the number 1 costume this year. Luckily, we had ours from Abbey's birthday (thanks Aunt Theresa)!

Here is her dance class with their teacher. I loved the Alice in Wonderland costume and will have to keep that in mind for next year with Abbey's blond hair!

Then the next day she had a Halloween party at school, so she went as Cinderella.

She had decided that she wanted Cinderella to be her main costume this year, so I bought her a matching crown to go with it. And I promised her that on the actual day of Halloween I will put some make-up on her...she is VERY excited about that!

Here is her class singing some Halloween songs that they learned in music class.

She got some goodies from the party too!

Then she found Rapunzel and ran around with her (those princesses have to stick together). Juliette is watching them wondering why she is not wearing a costume. Don't worry - she immediately put one on as soon as she got home!

Pumpkin Patch!

Ben didn't have school on Friday and the weather was actually nice, so I decided to take the kids to a pumpkin patch farm! Ben had been to Goebbert's on a class field trip a few weeks ago and he got a big kick out of showing us around the place! And look who was there...Dora!!

And Tico...

They had a lot of fun trains and cars to climb on...

Cuties...

Ben was going Batty...

Then we went into the Animal Land and got to feed the giraffes, which was very fun!

Ben feeding them carrots...

Juju fed them too. Abbey didn't want to (I don't blame her), although she did enjoy watching it all.

Towards the end we just put the rest of the carrots on top and the giraffe came with his giant tongue and licked them up in a second - it was pretty funny to watch as you can tell from Ben's face!

Then we went on to watch the pumpkin eating dinosaur!

Bert and Ernie shared their pumpkins...

They had a Haunted House that Ben really wanted to go in, but I thought Abbey and Juju were too young for it so we couldn't go in. But he was very intrigued by it. It blew smoke and a witch popped out from the top window, at which point Ben ran up to get a better view and Abbey became very concerned for him..."Mommy, what about Ben?!? Come back Ben!!" Definitely a good decision not to bring her in there!

We found a giant's rocking chair!

And last but not least, it was time to pick out some pumpkins...Juju picked the biggest one she could hold!

And Ben also picked out the biggest one he could find and then proceeded to roll it out to the check-out line (he did not want my help).

It was a lot of fun! We came home with way too many pumpkins, especially considering we have several growing in our garden in the backyard, but I couldn't resist letting them each pick out some. That's what happens when Mommy takes them to the pumpkin farm while Daddy is working :)