Halloween

     The first chance to dress up for Halloween this year came for Kelsey on October 30.  It was her preschool Halloween party.  She went as one of the Barbie princesses from the movie, "Barbie the Island Princess."  To complete her costume she wore a fake crown and it didn't matter one bit that it had Ariel the mermaid on it. :)

     The next day was Halloween!  Natalee was the only one that hadn't chosen her costume.  We had a bunch of girlie costumes but Natalee had finally worn the largest one the year before.  We talked about making her an Indian costume but there was so much else to do that I knew I didn't have time.  Partly because I had decided to sew trick-or-treat bags for them this year and still hadn't finished doing that.  So the night before we decided to take a trip to Kmart to check out costumes.  I had already looked at Walmart and hadn't seen anything.  Luckily Kmart costumes were 50% off and they had a much larger selection.  Natalee found a Little Red Riding Hood costume that she liked.  Haylee had originally been planning to wear the princess costume that Natalee had worn the year before, but at the sight of all those costumes decided she needed to spend her own money on a new costume.  Even Mackenzie and Kelsey were getting sucked in.  Suddenly Mackenzie didn't really like the costume she had chosen and Kelsey informed me, "I have no costume to wear!"  I reminded her that she actually had 3 or 4 costumes to choose from.  We managed to get out of there with just two costumes-Natalee's and the vampire costume that Haylee had bought for herself.
     I had warned Natalee that not as many kids dressed up for Middle School.  I wasn't sure if I should tell her that because I didn't know if I was be helping her or transferring my personal insecurities onto her.  But she decided to get all dressed up for school because she knew her friends were planning to dress up.  She looked great!

With the hood

Without the hood :)

     Daren called me right after he dropped her off at school to inform me that she had been mortified to see the lack of costumes when she got to school.  She almost took her costume off in the car (she had shorts and a white t-shirt underneath) but she was running a little late and decided she didn't have time.  After school I asked her how it went and she said it was fine.  The 8th graders don't dress up but a lot of the 6th graders, including her friends, were in costume.  I'm glad it ended up working out for her.
     Next step was to get Haylee and Mackenzie ready in their costumes and off to school.  They had both signed up to bring food to their class parties.  Mackenzie's class just asked for orange food and since Mackenzie loves Doritos, we signed up to bring those.  Haylee really wanted to make "bones."  it was an idea that I had gotten off of pinterest where you put little marshmallows on the ends of pretzel sticks and then dip them in white chocolate.

 

     They got their snacks and got into their costumes to head off to school.  Like I said earlier, Haylee wore a vampire costume she had bought the night before.  Mackenzie was a renaissance princess.

     Later that afternoon, we went to the school to watch the girls in their costume parade.  Kelsey and Nathan got all dressed up too.  Kelsey wore her Barbie princess costume again and Nathan wore a Blues Clues costume.

 

     Kelsey and Nathan were so excited to see Haylee and Mackenzie in the costume parade.  Mackenzie almost walked past without saying hi to Nathan and he ran behind her until she turned around and hugged him.  Lots of kids kept saying to Nathan, "Look, it's Blue from Blues Clues!"

 

     That night we had the trunk or treat at the church and the kids wanted to do a little trick or treating around the neighborhood if there was extra time.  For the trunk or treat, Kelsey wore her nurse costume-it was one my mom made for me when I was little.  Nathan "wore" the dinosaur costume I had bought him.  I use quotes because before we even left he had taken his costume off.  Since we were eating a potluck dinner I figured it would be fine to just bring his costume with us and put it on after dinner.  That way he wouldn't spill food all over it.  Unfortunately, he still wasn't interested in wearing it after dinner.  He was pretty unhappy in the pictures I took and wouldn't wear the hood at all.  I was going to take some individual pictures of each of the kids but ran out of time.  The bags they are holding are the ones I made for them.

     It was finally time to go out to the trunk or treat.  Nate decided instead of a dinosaur he wanted to be a stripper.

This is the only picture I got of him with the dinosaur head on!

Haylee trying to zip him up again!

     At this point, I finally decided to take his costume off and put his shirt back on.  Trying to constantly remove his costume was really slowing down the trick or treating and Haylee and Mackenzie had gone ahead of us long before.  When the girls went around the neighborhood after the trunk or treat, Nathan stayed home with his dad and was much happier to hand out candy to trick or treaters.
     We did have a little crisis at the end of the trunk or treat.  Someone had been handing out glow in the dark bracelets and Nate had been chewing on his.  All of a sudden we noticed he had glowing spots on his lip, cheek, and hand.  I took the bracelet away from him and gave it to Haylee to throw in the dumpster.  Haylee happened to be holding the choker necklace that had come with her costume at the time.  Unfortunately, when she threw away the leaky bracelet, her choker fell into the dumpster.  Remember, Haylee bought this costume with her own money.  She was distraught!  But she was a good sport about it.  Daren finally picked her up and held her over the choker so she could grab it.

Unfortunately, there is very little trash so it went all the way to the bottom.

And she got it!

     We had a very busy, very fun Halloween!!!