Week 192

Oct 31-Nov 6

Happy Halloween!  :)

We did our usual festive traditions.  This year per Jack's request we carved a happy face pumpkin and not a scary one.  I also let the kids paint a small pumpkin since we missed the opportunity to buy big pumpkins.  Apparently unless you get them more than a week before Halloween you are out of luck around here.  Either that or pay like $30-$40/pumpkin and that wasn't happening.  The kids really didn't mind.  After Jack was satisfied with Ed's sketch of the jack-o-lantern face, Ed got to work carving it out.  This was Abel's second Halloween, but really the first year he could participate in anything.  Last year as you all remember he was 6 weeks old so he really didn't have a clue what was going on.  Here are some pictures of us working on our masterpieces.

The morning of Halloween Jack had festivities at school.  All the kids wore their costumes and went on a big wagon caravan around downtown Sumter to a bunch of different businesses for trick-or-treating.  Jack of course rode with his BFFL Clark.  They loved it!  We had quite the parade of little preschoolers.  After the trick-or-treating we came back to the class and set up the Halloween Party.  Parents are asked to sign up for one party a year and this was the one we chose to do.  The kids went out on the playground and we prepped the classroom for their little party.  I think everything turned out very cute and the kids really seemed to have a great time.  I even made a handprint craft for them to do. I figured years from now they would be cute decorations and would also be a great way to reminisce about how small they were.  These are little ghost door hangers with their names on them.

Of course after all the fun the kids were exhausted.  We came home for lunch and they had a nice long quiet time.  I was glad because I knew trick-or-treating was going to wear them out and they needed to be refreshed after the bustling morning.  Ed and I laid our their costumes and fed them dinner.  Jack was so excited to get candy he could hardly stand to take pictures beforehand.  After all of Ed's hard work I really wanted to get some good shots of them in their costumes.  As you all know this is nearly impossible, but this is what I came up with.  Grandma and Harvin stopped by to see them in their full costumes.  Afterwards we were off on our trick-or-treating adventure.  Jack definitely had the hang of it after all of his practice that morning.  Abel was a little more difficult to direct so we just put him in the stroller.  He couldn't really handle the distance walking and he kept wandering off in random directions.  Jack was on a mission.  After all was said and done we had TONS OF CANDY.  We even had leftover from the candy we bought to pass out.  All in all it was a successful Halloween Holiday!  :)