Halloween Madness

Halloween is a big deal here. It is celebrated for about two weeks straight with different festivals and celebrations on the different bases.  It is crazy!  On Friday, Wyatt's preschool had a fall fun day for the kids.  On Friday night, our church (which happens to also be Wyatt's preschool) had a church fall festival with games and movies for the kids.  There were tons of weekend events (as mentioned) and on Monday Wyatt wore his costume to preschool and their class had a little party too.  Then Monday night was trick-or-treat night - finally, the big event!

Kaitlin, Tyler, Olivia, Wyatt, and Andrew...Elena and Charlotte had run off somewhere already!

Our friends came over early and we all stuffed our faces.  I made two big pots of chili, cornbread, a veggie tray, and black bean and corn salsa.  Matt & Allison and their kids came and brought a salad and spinach artichoke dip, Jeff & Laura's family brought corn muffins, cupcake spiders and pasta for the kids, and Brad & Robyn's family brought brownies for dessert... it was YUMMY!

It took us at least 15 minutes to round up all our children and find all the parts to their costumes, which had been strewn about the house!  We finally got out the door and the kids ran in every directions... Wyatt wanted to be the "leader" and kept screaming for everyone to follow him, but Olivia wanted to go the opposite direction, and all the other kids scattered like cockroaches in the night.  There were so many people everywhere it was hard to keep track of them!

That is one of the things I love most about living on base, though.  I really don't worry about anything happening to them, because for the most part people know me and my kids and they know where to return them if they get lost.  There is a sense of community here not unlike the environment I grew up in, where you can feel safe and relatively confident that your kids will be safe too.



This is the ONLY picture I have of the kids standing anywhere near each other!  I tried, I really did. :)  Wyatt was very excited to wear his construction costume from his birthday. The problem was that he kept losing parts everywhere he went.  You can see in this picture that he is missing all of his tools from his tool belt!

 

Ms. Olivia was "berry" cute in her little strawberry costume!  This is actually Charlotte's costume from last year. I just love it.  That face is her new smile for when I say "smile" or "cheese."  She is such a ham!  She kept her hat on for about 10 minutes and then ditched it.


I was impressed how quickly she grasped the concept of trick-or-treating!  She couldn't say it, of course, but she was happy to go up to complete strangers and give them a cute smile in exchange for some candy!  She was so desparate to get the candy in her mouth that she would just shove it in there.  The things like the caramels, chocolates and hard candy, she would just suck on until the wrapper came off in her mouth!!  It took me a minute to realize what she was doing (remember, it was dark)!  I realized it when I looked at my shirt and I had chocolate all over it, and then at her mouth...

Chocolate Covered Starwberry!!! :)

After awhile we all went back to the house to let the kids eat/play and hand out our own candy.  Wyatt and Kaitlin got chased by our neighbor, Mr. Nate (above) and it was very scary!! :) The Japanese families are so very cute and I love to see them all dressed up. It is so nice to give back a little something to the Japanese community. 

These are the pumpkins we painted... I wasn't quite up for carving...with Tommy not here again this year and the two mobile little ones  I figured someone might get hurt!!  So we settled for painting again :)