Halloween 2016

Saturday evening we carved pumpkins. None of my kids will touch pumpkin guts and this makes me mad. It never occurred to me as a child to whine and refuse to do it. Next year I'm not carving anyone's pumpkin or scraping out guts until they give a good honest effort reaching in and pulling out the guts themselves.

 Erica wanted a happy pumpkin.

Henry wanted a scary one with four triangle teeth and a crooked nose.

Sarah wanted big eyes, an upside down nose and lots of teeth. She did a lot of the carving herself.

For dinner I made zombie punch but failed to take a picture. I filled latex gloves I stole from the doctor's office with pomegranate juice, froze them then peeled off the gloves and then put them in a punch bowl full of Sprite. The kids didn't believe the floating red icy hands were really zombie hands but it took them the better part of dinner to guess how I made them.

Justin's pie of the month has nothing to do with Halloween other than the timing. Sunday I made this Atlantic Beach pie which is very similar to the Lemon Pie we all love. Major difference is this has a saltine crust instead of a graham cracker crust. The crust didn't taste like saltines, just extra crunchy. We think we like the Lemon Pie better because it has more filling and we missed the graham cracker taste.

All right, after pie we lit our pumpkins. (We forgot to do it Saturday night)

Here's Sarah as Hermoine before she headed to school. I was a lame mom and didn't go to the Halloween parade. I love to see kids in their costumes and I think it's a timeless school tradition but I did not feel like parking 4 blocks away and waddling to the gym. (Rees is at a dead end street so it's always a pain to park for these school events.) Maybe next year.

I told Sarah some kids dress like this every day for school (minus the cape and wand) and she thought that was funny. She called me later that day and asked me to bring her a shirt because she was dying of heat. I told her no because there were only 30 minutes left of school.

Henry got in his costume right after breakfast which is a good thing because I discovered two seams that had come undone after 6 months of playing in it. Then we had ghost sandwiches for lunch. I didn't get a picture before he ate the ghost head.

Here's my Captain America showing off his moves.

And my little Anna with her Anna braids. She kills me.

My nephew Mason joined us that evening for trick-or-treating. I wanted to stay in my neighborhood since there are tons of town homes down the street so way less walking for me.

Sarah did such a good job looking out for Erica. And when Henry had to go home for a bathroom break, Sarah kindly took his bucket with her.

Erica ate candy constantly the entire time. She was soooo slow since she was unwrapping things while walking. We were always waiting for her to catch up.

This house always decorates their yard so cleverly.

Today while everyone was at school or sleeping, I took all the decorations down. I like decorating for holidays but I think I like undecorating even more.

My kids made these pumpkins. I didn't really want to keep them because they are huge and my kids will probably make new ones next year so I took pictures of them and threw them away.

I like November because Thanksgiving is awesome and you don't have to do anything to get ready except decide what you're taking to Thanksgiving dinner. Oh, and have a baby. This year's November plans include having a baby. Have a baby, look through some recipes. I'm all over it.