Spooktacular Halloween!

Remember me...the Halloween-hater?  I'm back this year and slowly re-invented.  I've made strides in '08!

My life was consumed with Halloween party planning last week... fulfilling room mom responsibilities for McKenzie's class.  I've learned (well...I already knew, but I revealed to others) that I'm a rule-bender and violated our wellness policy at school about 10 times over. (shameful, I know..but somehow, I'm not phased).  My hands didn't even get slapped because as reported by many parents, the teacher, and most of the kids, "this is the best party we've ever had!"  And it didn't even consist of cupcakes and candies and sugary treats...but rather, owl liver and blood worms, edible eyeballs, and pig pituitary, witch fingers, and dracula teeth.  We did apple bobbing {reinvented--hung from a string}, made spider pops, ate 'spooktacular' food, played boo bingo, did some giant  monster madlibs, had a mummy wrap, and made spooky popcorn gloves.  I should take a page out of this Halloween party planning and next year do the same for our kids!  Brayden walks up from the middle school and volunteers in McKenzie's class every Friday, so at least 1/3 of my kids were in on the fun!

Lexie's class had a Halloween party that was supposed to drag on for THREE hours...we bailed after about an hour.  But all three girls had fun doing little  Halloween crafts.  This is Lexie having fun...with her sisters and  favorite little 'boy' friend, Caleb...I mean Batman.  She can choose her guys!

Getting 'ready' for trick-or-treating is always a huge process.  With hair to curl and makeup to apply it can take a couple hours for 6 kids.  If we're going to dress up we're going all the way and painting our faces.  It satisfies the little girls' makeup needs for at least a couple of days and then they're back to begging for 'yipstick.'  Look how cute our witches and geeks are!   Kenzie's purple-haired friend Kayla was also a witch--we had lots of good witches on our street that day!

Brayden hung out with his little 6th grade buddies and we let him 'live it up' since this is his last year to knock doors and beg for candy (I still think begging for candy is a stupid concept, but I'm slowly embracing it for the sake of the kids).  This is Bray with his friend Mattie before heading off to the big 'par-tay'.  Mattie's parents are Bush-haters and he wore this to make fun of Bush.  The back of his suit says, "going back to Texas..hee-haw!"  He was worried we'd be offended.  We laughed--I told him as long as he didn't steal our prop 8 signs, I wouldn't kick his fanny.  

We strolled the neighborhood with some neighbors and then let McKenzie, Monson & Lexie go rake it in for a couple of hours with our neighbors.  I've never seen so much candy in one place--it will most certainly last for a year of bribery!

Vivs ditched her witch hat the second I plopped it on her for pictures.  And a lollipop is just about all she needed to go along for the ride.  Maybe this is why we have dental issues in our family???    Joys for Halloween.