Pumpkin Carving and Halloween

Happy Halloween! For those of you that don't know, this is not my favorite holiday, but its obviously a favorite of the kids so I put my smiley face on and do my best. Chris on the other hand loves Halloween so the kids get one truly enthusiastic parent :)

After getting pumpkins a little over a week earlier we had to hold off carving them until Sunday because of our crazy schedules. Finally, Sunday night we got the pumpkins out and went to town. For the past few years I have done the majority of the carving because the kids had too hard of a time with it so they would come up with the designs and I would carve. This year Jake was ready to join the party and I finally got a good kids carving knife - which quite frankly is the best grown up carving knife too! So after I cut open the pumpkin Jake cleaned it out and drew his design on it (cross-eyed vampire). When he thought he was ready to go I checked it over and helped smooth out a few spots and he got to carving with me only helping a little on the eyes. And the pumpkin turned out great! He was so proud of himself and I was happy to only have to do Brenden's and Rylan's pumpkins ;)

Brenden was VERY against cleaning out his pumpkin, but he wanted to draw his design on the pumpkin and help with the carving. And of course, Brenden's pumpkin was the hardest/grossest to clean out. Anyway, after we got it cleaned out he drew the EXACT same thing as Jake, little brothers do want to be just like their big brothers. Since it was exactly the same I asked Brenden if that's what he really wanted or if he just wanted to do a similar one with his own touches. So we talked about different shapes and such and came up with a similar design, but we would use more triangle shaped eyes, add a nose, and do 6 teeth instead of 5 so he would have his own unique pumpkin. He was very happy and I was glad he got to use his own imagination!

And Rylan is 2 and couldn't care less what her pumpkin looked like so I just came up with a quick and easy smiley, happy pumpkin face :)

And then came Halloween! They don't wear costumes to school here so the boys wanted to get dressed as soon as they could once Jake got home. Since the weather called for 40 and rainy we needed to do some layering before the costumes could go on. Jake and Brenden picked out new costumes this year, for the past few years they have been recycling old costumes so I was fine with buying new ones when we went to the store. Rylan is still too young to tell me if she wants to dress up and what she would want to dress up as, but she definitely knew she wanted to get candy! Jake picked out a Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle, Brenden found a Darth Maul costume, and we figured we'd dress Rylan up in some fancy clothes and put all of her jewelry on and she could be Fancy Nancy (one of her favorite books/characters). 

Before Trick or Treating we went to one of the neighbors houses for a Pre-Trick-or-Treating party and Chili cook off. It was really nice for the kids to all get together to see each others costumes, have some dinner, and just play and show off. We stayed for about an hour hoping we could make it until Chris got home from work, but we weren't able to last so we headed out in the rain for some candy.

It was awful out! Luckily I had my mom to help me and the kids didn't seem to mind the weather - at least in the beginning. And Chris was able to join us about 10-15 minutes into our trek. It was a rough start, but we plugged through and it all worked out well. Jake ran into one of his friends from his soccer team and they took off together with Brenden close behind. After 45 minutes Rylan, my mom, and I headed home to get warm. Brenden stayed out for another 30-40 minutes when I picked him and up and Chris and Jake lasted another 30 minutes on top of that. Despite the miserable weather, the kids had a great time. 

They were all VERY cold when they made it home, but not too cold to not have any candy :) The night was a success with lots of candy to show for it! Rylan ended up with 16 pieces, Brenden 87 pieces, and Jake scored 165 pieces of candy! Quite a successful Halloween if I do say so myself! :)