Halloween 2008

The kids all had a great time this Halloween. This year Nick was the Greek God Apollo- It was pretty much assigned to him for a Social Studies Project- On Halloween day the 6th graders did a "wax museum" thing where they dressed up as a character from Roman, Greek, or Egyptian mythology, and they had to dress up and memorize a part to say when other school kids came through their classrooms. Nick's costume was pretty much a white sheet, some safety pins and a length of rope, the sheet was too big, and I think he looked a bit more like Socrates than Apollo. When he went trick-or-treating I just told him to tell people that's what he was.

Madison wanted to be Wilbur from Charlotte's Web. They've been reading that at school, and she just loves the book. I made the nose since the store-bought ones kept breaking.
Zach wanted to be a skeleton, and I didn't feel like running around from store to find a skeleton costume, and I was already feeling pretty crafty after that nifty nose I made, so instead I went running around from store to store looking for white contact paper to cut bones out of. Unfortunately by the time we had our ward's trunk or treat, (a week before Halloween) I still had found no contact paper so we went with the punk look and safety pinned poster-board bones to his black sweats. A friend of mine lent me some skeleton gloves, which he was super excited about but wore them for exactly 15 minutes. I found white contact paper by Halloween, and was up way too late cutting out his bones the night before. As far as a finished product goes, this is the best it gets. As a side note, if anyone needs any white contact paper, I have plenty. I finally found it at Home Depot. We figured Christopher could be Steve from Blue's Clues, since we already had the green striped shirt left over from when Nick was 2 1/2. We figured that would be a nice (free) costume, that he would probably love over anything else anyway, so that's what he was. However, the costume wouldn't be complete without an authentic Handy Dandy Notebook, and were able to locate one on e-bay (what on Earth did we ever do before e-bay?) so our cheapest costume became the most expensive one with the addition of one little prop. He however loves that thing and carries it with him all day long, and asks me numerous times a day to adjust the coil on the top because it tends to unwind itself, and he needs equal amounts of red plastic coil sticking out on either side of the notebook. (OCD anyone?) As I mentioned earlier, last week was the ward's trunk or treat, and Christopher wasn't much interested in collecting any candy as he was running around and into the parking lot. I spent my time chasing him. Then after the trunk or treat they had a chili contest and a dance floor, I was able to try a bit of the chili, but once again spent most of my time chasing him around. The other kids said they had fun though.

On Halloween night, our neighborhood had a little get together at the neighborhood park for some chili and rolls for dinner. We brought homemade root beer. I started making this 2 years ago for Halloween when I had to make some for Nick's class Halloween party. We serve it up in our front yard to the trick-or-treaters (along with store bought, prepackaged candy) who want something to drink (and know us and trust us). The dry ice is always a hit, even if people are wary of taking a drink from strangers. This year I was able to purchase the dry ice easily, but between John and I we went to seven stores to find the root beer concentrate. John finally found it at the third Wal-Mart we tried. The kids had a good time, Nick went off with some friends, I went around with the younger three, John stayed home and passed out candy. Christopher didn't mutter a single word the entire time, but held on to that bucket for dear life.