Halloween Fun

First off, my apologies for another two month hiatus from blogging. The Anatomy and Physiology class I am taking this semester is consuming a good portion of my free time in the evenings.

We had a fun Halloween week. On Wednesday, we carved jack-o-lanterns. We got these pumpkins at the end of September when we visited the apple orchard and pumpkin patch, so I was a little nervous about their condition. We carved the lids and looked inside. MK's was fine, but Ethan's 51 pound monster size pumpkin was a little mushy inside. Luckily, Dad scooped out all the goop out of that one.

MK and I drew the face on hers together. Notice that she's wearing Ethan's giant yellow rain parka. She insisted on wearing it to "keep the yucky stuff off."

Ethan drew and carved his (with a safety cutter) completely on his own. He decided to use a paint smock. What a couple of neat freaks. When did that happen? The two people who actually needed protective coverings were Mom and Dad, who did all the scooping.

The finished products. MK called hers a "smiley face pumpkin."

And Ethan called his a "staring pumpkin with lots of teeth."

On Friday, we attended the wedding of our neighbor's daughter Kate. We rate this wedding as the second most-fun we've ever attended...our own being the most fun, of course.

During the ceremony, MK kept asking "when do we get to the dancing part?" Ethan kept asking, "When do we eat?" At the reception, Ethan impressed our table with his "balance the spoon on my nose" trick.

Mary Kate then showed off her spoon balancing skills.

Then the nice man sitting next to her at our table showed her the bubbles. Lots of fun!

The dancing pictures are completely dark and blurry, as the kids didn't stop moving when they were out on the dance floor. We should have taken the good camera for some action shots.

On Halloween morning, we hosted a costume party. The kids each got to make a caramel apple, which was a big hit. Remember those flattened caramel sheet things that you stretch out and wrap around the apple? I loved those when I was a kid. I found some and we used those, which was fast, easy and fun for the kids.


Then we went out to the garage for the pinata. This year, we all helped with the paper mache. Then Mary Kate helped me paint the pumpkin orange and Ethan painted on the face, which he decided to make "spooky."

Here's MK taking a whack at the pinata.

Here's a picture of most of the kids and moms. One of the dad photographers told us to make monster faces. Ethan was apparently sick of getting his picture taken by this point and decided to stare at the ground in rebellion. A lot of the costumes are covered up by coats, but some of them included legendary soccer player Mia Hamm, a couple of ninjas, a couple of Darth Vaders, a Transformer, Luke Skywalker, Spider Man,Super Girl and three kids who took their costumes off before the picture.

In case you're wondering why poor Mary Kate and Amelia are incredibly outnumbered by boys, we did invite 5 other girls, but 2 had dance practice and 3 decided to stay away for precautionary health/germ reasons. MK came down with an ear infection and was running a fever on Thursday, so I called all the moms to let them know in case they wanted to avoid sick germs.

One of Ethan's best buddies, Ben, hung out for a while after the party. I'm not sure what MK's going for with this face. Ethan had recovered from all the picture taking by this point and his smile came back.

Then we went out trick or treating. MK lasted about an hour, then she Dad, and Tucker went home to hand out candy. Ethan was still full of energy after about 2 hours, when we completed our route. Our neighbor Kathy snapped a quick family picture before we left.

Luke and Super Girl show off some of their moves.