Halloween

I love Halloween.  Besides the candy it is the start of the Holidays, the beginning of fall, and I can change the doorbell to spooky sounds.  This year we spent lots of time getting ready for class parties.  We made treat baggies with sucker ghosts for Ridge's preschool class.  I did the games for Kyleigh's class.  We played pumpkin stomp, where you tied a string to a orange balloon, and then to your ankle.  Then they chased each other and tried to stomp everyone else's balloon while protecting their own.  We had a vegetable skeleton relay.  I made 5 vegetable skeleton kits and they had to put it together based on the picture in their kit and had to do it faster than any other group.  We also did an orange jello slurp.  Each kid had a small container of jello and a straw.  The winner slurped their jello the fastest.  It was hilarious.  Katelyn's class had pumpkin bowling, cookie decorating, halloween twister, playing with flubber, and decorating pumpkins with sharpies.  My friend came across 30+ extra pumpkins and lined them on my driveway, so I took them to the school for Ms. Watson's pumpkin patch.  The best thing I did for Katelyn's class was a poke-a-prize board.  I bought a $10 chalkboard at Home Depot.  I left the top blank and glued styrofoam cups to the rest of the board so they were laying horizontal.  I put prizes in each of the cups, then covered them with orange tissue paper and held that in place with a rubberband around each cup.  After they knocked over each of the toilet paper rolls with a pumpkin (pumpkin bowling) they got to "poke-a-prize." I left the top blank so I could write in chalk and then change the colors for a different holiday.  I also did a balloon stomp game for Katelyn's class, but Walmart didn't have anymore orange balloons, so we used white and called it the ghost stomp.  Katelyn was one of the last two balloons left.  She had all but a few of the class chasing her and she was running around screaming (we were out front on the lawn).  It was so funny.

A few weeks before Halloween Kyleigh and her friend Amaya decided they wanted to have matching Halloween costumes.  Not only did they want to match, but they wanted to sew the costumes themselves.  They arranged with Amaya's Mom for help sewing before they pitched the plan to me (smart).  Since she was already on board I told the girls I would take them shopping for fabric.  We spent a few hours at Joanne's one morning and they spent a lot of time over the next few weeks sewing the costumes.  They turned out so cute.  They looked so cute, in fact, that they needed to show them off.  We knew we were leaving for Halloween so we invited Amaya and her family to our trunk or treat at church.  They ended up winning a prize in the costume contest and they were pretty excited about that.

We went to Pocatello the weekend of Halloween and went trick or treating with the cousins.  My mom made chili for dinner, just like she did when we were the trick or treaters.  Ridge got some candy, then shut down the trick or treating for eating candy.  We went until a few of the kids were done.  Then Kyleigh and Tucker went with Rusty to hit some more houses.  Then when Tucker was all Tuckered out (haha) Kyleigh and Rusty went some more.  They were still out when the only kids ringing the doorbell were the teenagers.  She got some serious loot.  The night ended with a candy sort and we will wait another year for Halloween.

P.S.- Ridge did not throw up on me after eating too much candy this year.  Woo Hoo!