On Halloween Night

It's always fun celebrating holidays with kids. They are always excited about all of the little details that make it special.  Eli really liked Halloween.  We sang Halloween songs such as "I'm a Mean Old Witch" and "5 Little Pumpkins."  We played "Going on a Witch Hunt," which was basically the same as a bear hunt, but looking for a witch on her broom instead.  We read funny Halloween stories.  He made Joy School Halloween crafts--painting a pumpkin and making a bat.  He loved seeing all the spooky decorations at Kroger, and would boldly declare, "I'm not scared of anything!"

We made Halloween-shaped sugar cookies to share with family and friends.  They ended up being made from scratch, as well as the icing!  My first time, and they turned out pretty yummy!  (though they did break easily.)

The Sunday before Halloween we carved our pumpkin.  Clara only made it through the first five minutes, then had to be put to bed extra early because she was dealing with sickness and couldn't make it past 6 o'clock that week.  Eli wanted nothing to do with the pumpkin.  He thought it smelled bad, and wouldn't touch the inner goo.  I scraped it out while David did the cutting.  Eli requested the pumpkin to look just like jack-o-lantern paper plates we had (meaning the classic look).  Pretty easy to pull off!



Eli named our pumpkin "Nonoggin,"
after a Curious George Halloween
movie.

The afternoon before Halloween, David's work had trick-or-treating for the children of its employees.  The hallways and some offices/cubicles were really decked out in decorations, and Eli had a blast.  Eli decided that he wanted to be Captain Moroni (from the Book of Mormon) quite a while ago.  He has scripture character cards, and he loved the way Captain Moroni looked.  We bought a costume on Amazon, my mom supplied the sword, and David made a helmet from a milk jug.  Haha!  Unfortunately the helmet turned out to be a little too snug.  Clara was a puppy, the same costume Eli wore as a 10-month old.  Most people at Duke thought she was a boy, oh well!  

The morning of Halloween we had dentist appointments.  (Gotta clean the teeth before rotting them, eh?)  To celebrate no cavities we ate lunch at Wendy's.  (Yes, that's where we always go when we eat fast food.  It's pretty much the only one that's really close.)  It was a cold, rainy, blustery day, but the kids loved eating out and playing/talking with the other customers.

For dinner, I thought it'd be fun to make something a little festive.  So I made "mummy dogs," (hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls.  Neither kid would eat them (apparently both kids hate hot dogs), so I guess it was a bust.

It was really cold and pouring down rain all afternoon and into the trick-or-treating time.  We had a few trick-or-treaters, then headed out ourselves when the sleet stopped for a bit.  We didn't stay out very long, just down a few streets.  Lots of people didn't have their light on, so we had to go longer to get more houses.  Eli got plenty of loot.  Many people would give him handfuls of candy!  Clara got the hang of the theme of the night, and happily and willingly accepted candy bars when people offered them to her.  : )