Halloween 2009

Part 1: (Bear with me on the long post, 90% of why I blog is for my own family history.)

Halloween is a really big deal to my kids, apparently it is to the rest of the world too. Marty heard a statistic on the news the other day that Halloween is the second largest grossing (no pun intented) holiday next to Christmas. Hmmmm. Don't know quite how I feel about that.

We did buy costumes, pumpkins and candy, so I guess we're contributing to the spending. The kids have a love/hate relationship with carving pumkins:

We had a fun time carving with our friends, the Corrys. Marty got out his cordless drill and great big drill bit and drilled starter holes and chimneys. He also helped with the "guts" on some of Jenna's kids pumpkins.

It's kind of fun that our kids are all old enough to scoop out their own guts - for the most part.


Part 2:

Anyhoo, I do make a conscious effort to try not to be a halloween humbug for my kids and I have been known to make costumes, take days off work and buy candy.

I would rather purchase a costume than make one, but this year Jaxon wanted to be Sirius Black from the Harry Potter movies.

I tried finding a costume to buy, but couldn't find one. I finally found some striped fabric and whipped up a sparkling new prison suit.

... and then I had to distress it and make it look like he'd been living in Azkaban for many years. (My pot may never be the same.)

I thought he looked pretty good in the end.


And Brynn was Hermione, which is perfect because she's always reminded me of Hermione and does a pretty fierce Hermione imitation.


(photo courtesy of my photo buddy, Nan - thanks Nan!)
(and one of mine with a little faded action)

Luke was supposed to go along with the theme and be Harry Potter, but he rebelled and insisted on being the Hulk. I just bought a costume at Walmart, but I loved it, it was sooooo cute, the big puffy muscles just fit him, I got such a kick out of it.... and that mask!

(another photo of Nan's)

Part 3:

One of the things I do love about Halloween is our school's annual costume parade. I usually take the day off work to take pictures of it, but I had been sick for 2 weeks and missed several days of work, so I left my camera with Marty and asked Nanette to get some pictures for me also. The parade is so fun, the costumes are clever and all the teachers get into it.





Our principal/serious Nintendo player.


This is pretty uncommon in our nice little town, but is a prime example of what I DON'T like about Halloween:

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I just realized that this will be Jaxon's last year in the elementary school and the last year in the costume parade. WAAAAAA! That makes me so SAD!

Sorry for the outburst. Well, another Halloween come and gone. The kids are already thinking about next year.