Friday Night Fun

I want to share images from all the Halloween events we attended in the month of October. We did plenty and that is the way I like it. We started off with a weekend in the middle of October at a Sterling Heights halloween bash. We were joined by visitors too. Grandma Ruthie, Aunt Becky and Cousin Cordelia took the train to stay with us for a 5 day weekend. The event had bouncers for the kids to jump in and donuts/cider to enjoy. Along with the singing/dancing they had a Halloween parade on a big stage. They formatted it by ages (1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's etc..) Casey and Cordelia were on stage together. Casey won a pumpkin. She was thrilled. Cordelia was super adorable in her mouse costume. All morning she said "Squeak, Squeak". Jakes walked with the 4 yr old group. We saw a few other friends from classes we've previously attended at the parks n rec dept. After the parade each child receives a ribbon for participating in the parade. The kids loved that!




While at the event we saw our good friends Chrissy and Matt. They have 2 kids, Samantha (3) and Spencer (1). They too were Mickey and Minnie. Sammy and Casey are good friends so I couldn't resist getting a Minnie photo of them together. Aren't they adorable???


Chris took this series while Casey and I waited in line for a bouncer slide.


The following week we hosted a playgroup Halloween party at our house. We made bats (with our handprints), sang songs, danced to music and read books. All the kids (we've known all of them since they were 4 months old) were dressed in cute costumes. We had a cheerleader, a fairy, 3 dinosaurs and my Mickey and Minnie. There were few mommies and kiddies that were sick and had to cancel at last minute (that dwindled our party by 1/2 but we still had a nice time with the group that came.) I didn't get a good group shot of everyone. Bummer. :(

I wanted to share 2 photos of Halloween treats. Marybeth (from playgroup) made these AWESOME looking witch cupcakes. The must have slaved over them for hours. They were very detailed. The the best part, they were yummy too. Then, the Wednesday before Halloween Jake was selected as SPECIAL PERSON. This means he gets special privileges during class for the day (they get selected as special person a few times throughout the year on a rotating basis). He also gets to bring in snack. I wanted to do something with a theme to it. The night before Jake and I spent about an hour making 20 spider cookies. They turned out great and Jake tells me the kids loved them.


On the night before Halloween, while I was out playing Bunco with girlfriends, Chris took the kids to a Trunk or Treat at his church. The evening started with pizza and a game after dinner. When it was dark outside everyone went to their vehicles (all set up in a cirlce in the parking lot) for the trunk or treating to begin. Jake and Casey went around collecting yummy treats in their buckets. Chris told me that Casey led the way the entire time yelling out "Trunk or Treat", while Jake stood back a ways unsure of who everybody was. They came home with a big loot of treats. Good thing because even though I gave Chris specific instructions to only give away 1 piece of candy per child (we needed to save some for Friday evening) he didn't listen and let Jake and Casey give each child 2 pieces. We were low on treats for Friday so I let the kids pick out 3 pieces from their buckets from the trunk or treat and the rest I dumped into our candy bowl for Halloween night. Recycle, Reuse, Renew!!!


On Friday night we got dressed and played in the leaves while waiting for their friend Alison (3.5 yrs old) to come over. The three of them were going trick or treating together. It took the kids 5-10 mins to figure out what trick or treating meant. They wanted to dance around and play in the front yards of all the houses. But once we instructed them to run to each house to get treats they were off and running. We trick or treated for over an hour. Casey kept up with Jake and Alison pretty good (he legs are much smaller) but towards the end she pooped out and Daddy and I carried her for the last 10-15 houses. We sat around later in the evening with neighbors talking and checking out (okay...eating a few) the treats the kids collected. We are overloaded with treats. I hate throwing it all away but what else do I do with it? It's calling my name 10 times a day to eat them. But so far I've held off to only having 2 treats on Friday night and that has been it!!! It has been very difficult.






Halloween is a fun time of year. I love the pumpkins, costumes and friendly neighbors we come in contact with. We lucked out and had beautiful weather. No wind, warm at 60 degrees. It just isn't the same if it's cold/rainy or snowing.

One more thing I want to share. Jake has been doing great with drawing pictures and printing his letters. I asked him to draw a pumpkin, a bat and a spider. I also gave him a sheet of paper with the letters HAPPY HALLOWEEN printed on them. He looked at my paper and rewrote the message on his picture. I was very impressed with the end result. It's amazing to see his writing/drawing skills improve on an almost daily basis.