Halloween

For Halloween this year we went with a China theme...mostly because we had all the stuff for it already.  Now that I'm thinking about it, we could have done more with the costumes, like throw in some authentic fans or something, but oh well :)
Our first Halloween celebration was at playgroup.  The kids wore their costumes, listened to Halloween stories, carved pumpkins, frosted & ate cupcakes, and had a costume parade (more like a run-around-the-yard-in-costumes).

We had several evenings of pumpkin carving...why do three pumpkins in one night when you could spread it out over three nights?  Jackson painted his pumpkin a few weeks ago when we first got it, and then we carved pumpkins the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday before Halloween.

 

 

On Halloween some friends invited a few families over to eat soup before going out trick-or-treating.  The idea was great, the food was great, the company was great...what can I say? It was great!
 Some of the kids...There was also a little pumpkin, a pirate, and I'm not sure what else...but getting them all to stay still at the same time was impossible.

 We went around to a few houses with our friends in their neighborhood then came home and went our our cul-de-sac to see our neighbors. It was much cooler than it has been and it was raining for the first part of our rounds.  When we got home,  I put Clayton to bed and then Jackson had a great time helping Daddy hand out candy.  I think he enjoyed that more than trick-or-treating.

Even though I may lose some awesome mom points for not making our Halloween costumes, I tried to win some back by making their trick-or-treating bags.  And maybe even get bonus points because it is something they'll use every year instead of just this year like a costume would be.  I didn't have them completely done by the time we made the rounds on Monday night...I just had the circles and letters on, but they were still functional.  And I'm so proud of myself for finishing them this year!  I didn't even wait until the day of Halloween next year to finish them!  I don't love how the back turned out.  I shouldn't have gotten the novelty fabric and just stuck with the plain stuff, but Jackson really thought it needed trick-or-treaters on the trick-or-treat bag.  Oh well.  And the circle on the front really is orange, not redish, and the ric rac is green, not white like it looks in these pictures.  

Clayton's:

 Jackson's:

 The back side (don't look at it for too long):

 And the front:

Funny:

After all the trick-or-treating and handing out goodies, we were getting Jackson ready for bed.  He protested, saying that he couldn't go yet.  His reason? "But I haven't eaten all of my candy yet!"  And he was sincere.  Fortunately he was ok with saving it to eat on another day.