Our Ward Halloween party...the kids and I

To tell our Halloween story this year it will take a couple of posts. I want to get the whole story down but can't decide which post should come first. So I will tell them from two different points of views, but some info will overlap.

Our ward did our Halloween party/trunk or treat the weekend before Halloween weekend. It was nice not having it in the middle of the halloween crush, but it did mean we had to be ready for halloween a week earlier. We got it done, but it was close.

Ellie picked out this great "Evil Queen" costume at Costco for 15 bucks months ago and loved it so she was set. In shopping for acccessories for other costumes she saw the feather mask and loved it. Since it matched with her costume I splurged and got it for her.

Matthew is old enough that he doesn't go trick or treating so costumes are optional for him. He was asked to help at some of the booths around the church and encouraged to dress up for those so we pulled out John's old Zorro costume and luckily it fit. We did have to tell him who zorro was and tried to find the "good" zorro movie but it's not on net flicks so we are still trying to track it down to show him who he was. Since he really didn't know who that was he went with the guy from Princess Bride. He pulled that one off pretty well.

Harrison was my biggest struggle. Since we had worked so hard on his Egyptian God costume for school I really didn't want to do another costume. But he really didn't want to be that. What did he want to be? Yep a unicorn. To say that John and I were opposed to this was an understatement. But when he tracked down and found a costume he could borrow free and got dad to finally go along with it he was in heaven. He loved it since it shocked everyone so much.

Though we did put pink gel in his hair, his face is that pink from the sunburn he got all day on the soccer field. Talk about "owning" your costume.

Rachel flip flopped between so many costumes it was not looking promising that she would be anything. I finally took her with me to a kids resale shop and tried on every costume in her size. She fell in love with this one and for 8 bucks I was in love too! She got to do all the make up and fun glitter things that she loved without having to be a princess. It was perfect for her.

She has the teenage girl pose adn look down doesn't she. It's pretty scary if you ask me!

Kids have begged me for years to "really be a witch" I decided that I would suprise them and go all out. So I did my face up with fake nose and chin and took them to the church for our activity. Notice John is missing from the festivities. It's not really a shock. He's just not a costume and Halloween guy. In fact in all the years we have been married I can only think of once that he dressed up for us for Halloween. He wore the costume that Matthew is wearing the year before Ellie was born. It was suppoesd to be his costume for every year but hasn't made it on him since. He just finds ways to avoid dressing up. So the kids and I head off to church telling them that he had a work thing he couldn't get out of and we turned in his chili for him for the chili cook off.

I really hadn't intended to be so unrecognizable. I threw the whole thing on so fast I didn't really mean to be that scary either. But kids ran from me and many started crying when they saw me. So I guess I'm a better witch than I planned. The kids were so excited that he won the chili cook off. They wanted to call him right then and tell him that he won. They felt bad that he wasn't there.

In spite of him not being there. I kept the kids busy with lots of food, games, friends and fun. They even met a few people that they hadn't known as people brought freinds to the activity.

Come the end of the activity for the trunk or treating I was a bah humbug and didn't hadn out candy from our car. Without John there to help I wanted to make sure I walked around with the kids so they didn't get scared out there. They had fun and the night ended with a great suprise they didn't see coming!