What a Happy Halloween!

We had an exceptionally fantastic and festive Halloween. It really was a perfect day.

I had all these fantastic plans of fun things we were going to do throughout the month of October, but I really dropped the ball. Consequently, I really crammed our actual Halloween with all sorts of Spooktacular (yes, I said spooktacular) goodness. And it was totally worth it! It was a day well spent with my little best friends.  

If you have read previous Halloween posts, you know that November 1st always finds a very sappy Mary. And November 1, 2017 is no different. I know these Halloweens-with-young-kids are numbered, and for whatever reason the first day of November always has me drinking in as much of "the moment" as possible before it becomes a distant memory.  I mean, it really does feel like just last year I was taking a 2 month old Jack-O-Lantern Caity to all the community events...I was so excited to jump into the newness of motherhood and holidays and here I am NINE years later and so many great memories that I simply cherish. (I warned you...sappy!)

Today I feel a general contentment- what a life! 
(see previous post for kids' costumes)

Our table Halloween morning.

The kids' lunches for school: Zombie Juice, Jack-O-Lantern Peaches, Ghost String Cheese, Pumpkin Spice Tortilla Wheels, Spider Oreos. (I feel like I should add, the kids were very lukewarm about this lunch that I was pretty dang excited about!)

Our traditional Jack-o-Lantern Pancakes with Ghost Vanilla Milk.

While the big kids were at school, we read all our Halloween books, watched Paw Patrol Halloween, and I crammed in all my procrastinated Halloween projects so I could enjoy them with the kids in the afternoon.

When Johnny and Caity hopped off the bus, we played in the leaves with our friends, the Osbornes, for a good solid time. I really think leaf piles are on my top ten. It was a beautiful, warm, breezy fall day. We had such a blast. And I am just smiling all goofy just remembering it. It was just one of those unmanufactured moments that you can't explain to anyone and do justice in how special it was.  So you just thank God for the beautiful simplicity of afternoons kicking, throwing, and piling leaves.

Also: it's hard enough getting four kids to look at the camera at once...double that? Well, we tried! :)

Next, we came home and had Mummy Hotdogs and made Caramel Apples.  While I made the soup for later, the kids decorated Halloween cookies.

....and maybe I ate them, like almost ALL of them. I know: self control- buuuut, sugar cookies- yum.

Next, it was to the back yard to clean out some pumpkins. I just love those kids. This was the first year they completely emptied those gooey suckers all by themselves! Proud Mom/Johnny/Caity moment there. After pumpkins were cleaned out, everyone got into their costumes. 

And things got a little crazy...because costumes just have that effect on kids! Am I right?

I froze ice in a plastic glove and put it in the red punch, the boys were pretty enamored by it. I was pretty stoked that for the million pinterest fails- one finally worked.  It's hard to tell, but William's crocodile head it trying to get a drink of "the nummy bloooood." Since I spent naptime working on Halloween games, that I swore I was going to finish in September, I was determined we would have time to play them!

We did a cake walk- bad picture- but you get the idea...

And Bingo! Who doesn't love a good game of Bingo?

Dad got home earlier than we planned- Yay!! He helped the boys carve their pumpkins while Caity and I (mostly Caity) worked on the girl's pumpkin. I looked down from my bedroom window and saw the boys crawling all over their dad and I basically just got all the feels- how lucky I am to have John! He is an awesome dad.

Carving Pumpkins...

Oh and hey- there's me. I'm not in any of these pictures, so I thought I'd include the costume picture I sent John.This way, you guys know I still exist and I'm not a robot. I was REALLY creative with my costume this year!;)

Then it was off to go Trick-or-Treating around our neighborhood! We went with our friends, the Mullens. Travis is Johnny's age and Abby is the little sister Caity always wanted.

It was such a fun night being out with all our neighbors running door to door.

Caity found a throne of leaves.

Trick or Treat!!

Caity and Abby

Our whole trick or treating gang! And Pennywise...eek!

Johnny and Travis were insane sprinting all over the place, Matthew demanded to be carried to the door step, William was contently keeping a good pace and didn't say a word besides, "Trick or treat" and "Thank you" the entire night, and Caity just hovered and nurtured Abby the whole way, and Abby let her so it was a win-win. 

We got home and dumped out our candy, drank hot chocolate, ate vegetable soup in pumpkin shaped bread bowls and watched "The Nightmare Before Christmas." 

Everyone was exhausted, but happy. After scriptures, they all filed to bed and crashed in record time!

Here are a couple of videos I had taken throughout the day:

Until next year, so long Halloween!!