2 November 2014

We carved pumpkins for our family night activity this week.

Abe picked a blue hubbard squash to carve instead of a pumpkin.

Gibson carved a paw print on his pumpkin to match his Halloween costume.

 Here are the finished pumpkins on our front porch.  

 Back in September, Helen, Gibson and Addi asked if they could plan a Halloween party and invite our neighbors to come.  Becky approved a small guest list and gave them a $10 budget.  They spent all month planning their party, making decorations and putting together activities.  The party was Tuesday after school.  This is a photo of their final plans.  

 They set up a buffet of creepy foods: blood (apple cider,) eyeballs (grapes,) poisoned apples (apple slices,) witches' warts (Hershey kisses,) worms (the gummy kind,) dried rat brains (popcorn,) and spider eggs (deviled eggs.)  They only spent $6.93.

 The party was a big success!  Becky just sat and visited with some moms while Helen, Gibson and Addi ran the party.  Everyone took turns and played nicely.  We think we'll turn all our future party planning over to these little experts.  Here's a funny photo of Helen with black frosting on her face.

 And finally, some photos from Halloween.  This is a photo of Helen in her school costume parade.  Helen went as Elsa from the movie "Frozen."  She is wearing underarmor under her costume because all the 4th and 5th graders in the district ran a 5K before the school Halloween parties.  Helen rocked the race.  She ran the whole way and came in 133rd out of over 600 kids.

 Here's a photo of Gibson in the school parade.  Gibson went as Martin Kratt from the PBS show "The Wild Kratts."  In the show, Martin and his brother, Chris, can take on the characteristics of any animal by putting a creature power disc into their creature power vest.  Becky and Gib made a variety of discs, but Gibson wore his dragon disc all day.  The Kratt brothers only change into real animals, but the nice thing about a Halloween costume is you can do what you want.

 This was the first year Abe went trick-or-treating with his friends instead of his family.  We took a photo of them as they passed down the street.  Abe and Brandan made Abe's Tron costume.  Abe is the one in the middle dressed in black with glow-in-the-dark duct tape.  Nacho Libre is on the right, wrapped up in his cape.

 Sofi, Joey and Emma planned a Halloween party for their friends this year.  The party was at Emma's house.  Sofi and Joey were in charge of the food and spent three nights this week at our house baking-- 2 kinds of cookies, cupcakes and truffles.  Sofi went to the party dressed as Princess Buttercup from "The Princess Bride."  Her date, Hunter, went as The Dread Pirate Roberts (Wesley.)  Some people thought Sofi was Elsa, which is an easy mistake to make since Elsa was hands down the most popular costume this year.