Halloween

 To kick off Halloween, we started with a Halloween party for the neighborhood kids.  Katy and Maddie were nice enough to come and help me out because we have  lot of 3- and 4-year-old kids in our immediate neighborhood!

We started off the party with some spooky munchies: spider cookies, bones 'n blood, cheesy ghosts, and monster mouths.

 Then we played some games.  We pinned the eyeballs on the monster, bowled with ghosts (TP rolls with faces drawn on them) and a pumpkin bowling ball, and threw ghost bean bags into a pumpkin's mouth.  Then we read some spooky books together.  We finished the party with decorating paper bags that we used for our candy scavenger hunt.  It was fun but exhausting!!

 Here are the kids in their Halloween shirts that I scored after Halloween last year for $0.25 each.  Does anybody else notice how clearance stuff has been lacking lately?  It seems like more of a struggle lately to find the dirt-cheap clearance deals I used to.

 This year our family sported a Star Wars theme.  The boys were Jedi's and Gracen went as yoda.  I dressed up as Princess Leia for the trunk or treat.  Some people had some pretty great trunks at the trunk-or-treat.  One of the gals I visit teach and her husband dressed up as Hansel and Gretel.  Then they stuck candy all over their van to represent the candy house in the story and laid out a trail of bread crumbs leading to each side of the van.  So creative!  I also liked Kyra's shark trunk, especially since I snapped a picture of her describing how it came about that looks like she's terrified of the shark. :-)

 And the perfect end to a good Halloween was the presence of this oh-so-spooky spider hanging right above our door as we left for trick-or-treating.  I asked my man to "protect the hearth" my finishing this big guy off but he refused - claimed the spider "wasn't hurting anything."  So now I lose sleep thinking about where this guy sleeps at night!