It's a Parté

November always takes me by surprise. You spend all this time gearing up for Halloween and all the costumes and parties and then you collapse in bed with a sigh and a slight sugar headache and you wake up the next day and it is NOVEMBER! It just sneaks up, every time.

And blessed day, it is even better when it is Daylight Savings the same day. People, I think about moving to Arizona every year just to avoid Daylight Savings. Who ever invented it obviously never had kids, because whereas adults can fool themselves after a few days into going to sleep when the clock says to, kids are controlled by their bodies. So guess who is going to wake up bright and early to kids asking for breakfast before it is even humanly possible for me to spell 'cold cereal?'

Whew, thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

Anyhow, let's get back to recapping October which we have left in the dust (may it rest in peace). We did a family Halloween party instead of trick-or-treating and I absolutely loved it. Trick-or-treating is good too, but I liked chilling with the fam (this may be the start of a beautiful tradition that will surely be taken over by friends as my children get older and think their parents are fuddy-duddies, but for now I will savor it). I planned on adding a little more to it, but it turned out to be perfect just the way it was.

I think the whole evening revolved around food (as any good party should). We started dinner with Jack-o-lantern Egg McMuffins



and candy corn pudding (and yes, I mixed up the order of the colors).



Then we played a game June had spent an exorbitant amount of time making.



It was actually a lot of fun. I had planned to do a craft after, but as Tyler pointed out, it would only be displayed for one day and then it would be time to put the Halloween stuff away. His sensibility won out combined with the fact that I didn't feel like shopping for craft supplies at the last minute. So instead, we made witches and watched The Great Pumpkin on YouTube. You have to look at the witches with creative eyes. I saw the idea here. I went for the smaller hats (easier) but I did make the webs just because I wanted to see if I could.



I just used a neon orange gel icing that I already had on hand to stick the kiss to the cookie, but two of the girls asked if it were glue before they would eat it. Yep, for last resort, I stick with Elmer's.

Really, that was it for the evening. After the movie, we packed kids into bed. Don't forget that during all these festivities the doorbell would ring every five minutes or so and there would be a stampede for the door. The girls loved handing out candy and we finally had to develop a rotation so no one was upset. It was a good family evening.

Things we did not do this year:

The Phantom never made an appearance. Surprisingly none of the kids even mentioned him. Who am I kidding? As if the kids are going to try to bring back something that takes most of their candy. I didn't have the energy and since we only did the candy gathering once, I figured they could keep their loot.

Also, Tyler failed to implement the Daddy Tax (giving himself the right to take his favorite candy). However, the girls got together and made these adorable candy pages for us complete with labels so we know whose is whose.



Don't even try to steal my candy Dad. The Mommy Tax can be just as fierce.