H is for Halloween

We don't have many traditions for Halloween, besides Trick-or-treating. But we do eat a breakfast of champions. I hear this is the ghoul's and boy's favorite cereal on Halloween. We only get it once a year.

And it is important to have something easy to grab because Halloween mornings are always crazy. I was up early working on Robyn's makeup. Even Cyborgs need to eat though.

June, once again, had my back on all the other face painting.

And everyone chipped in somewhere. Ivory did lunch bags. She did such a cute job capturing each of the girls costumes.

Amazingly we were all ready to go on time. Looking good my troop. Still no family themed costume. I guess you could say that we had three fairy tales going (Cinderella, Little Mermaid, and Snow White) or that we had three animals (fox, cat, and hound) and everyone has teeth (thanks tooth fairy) but we are still a far cry from dressing alike. One of these years...

Tyler took the bigs to school and I got all the littles in the car only to remember that they weren't due at school until an hour later than usual. Oh well. That allowed us to go over to Tyler's work and take a picture with him. (And get some early candy from Lisa.)

When I dropped off the kids, I just stayed since they had some fun activities planned in the morning. There was a hip hop Halloween ball where all the grades did something fun. There were cute songs sung, a few stories read and some rhythms clapped and played on instruments. Then sixth grade got up and did some shadow plays. They had a large sheet up with a bright light behind and they acted out stories with their shadows. They were pretty cool, except the second one was frightening. Like give-your-child-nightmares scary. It was about a ghoul/monster that comes to schools, kidnaps kids, and dismembers them. There were shadow guts and everything. Wow...I'm thinking someone didn't think that one all the way through. I was laughing because it was honestly funny how awkward it was. Luckily my kids didn't have any lasting scars.

After all the grades went back to their classrooms, it was time for the first grade Halloween program. The first grade teachers (well, at least one of them) love music. She plans a Halloween, Christmas, and Spring program. They did such a cute job. There were so many fun songs I had never heard before. Can you see my cute Pearl up there? She does not have a crown of flowers on; that is the girl behind her, dressed for day of the dead.

Pearl seemed to have a really good time. I heard her singing many of the songs around the house in the weeks previous.

My afternoon was spent helping in Daisy's class with their Halloween party. I read stories that could almost be heard above the hubbub of the room.

In the afternoon, they had the Halloween parade. I ran into Beth and sat with her and her cute little fox. Love matching costumes ideas.

The parade was good. Saw one kid with his head inside a jar. Very cool, but that must be so uncomfortable. (Sorry about poor picture quality. All these kids were on the move.)

Found my three somewhere in the crowd.

The afternoon was pretty chill, saving up energy for the evening. I had to plug in my cyborg and recharge her for optimal functioning.

In the evening, we went over to Hannah's neighborhood first. She always tries to talk us into it, and I'm glad we did. They have a great area and it is very family friendly.

I tried to do a Snow White silhouette here. Not too bad.

It was a lovely evening. It was a little chilly, but not too bad. Tyler rode on the Grom because his ankle wasn't up for a lot of walking. I got this picture of Utah lake and dusk settling over Utah Valley.

There are a few houses that we like to hit no matter what. One is the 'chainsaw' house. They have tons of decorations and a guy with a chainsaw that chases you. We have had kids cry there before. Awesome. We didn't travel that direction, so I took people in shifts to go visit there. No one cried this year. That's too bad.

We also went to the 'electrocution' house. I had never been there before. This guy has a couple fun machines and he will put your candy into the current and you can watch it be electrocuted. (It actually burns the wrappers a bit sometimes.)

Guess who we ran into there? Why, the other Pearl dressed up as a cat. Here are two feline Pearls.

I took the littles home early, since it was a school night. They got a lot of candy, although only half as much as the bigs who had something like 4 lbs. of candy. (Each.)

What a busy night. But it was great. Another Halloween tucked under our belts.