Halloween 2012



The excitement could not be contained anymore, so luckily it was finally Halloween day.  Andrew and Claire had a parade at school and small class room parties.  They had a coned off area on the blacktop and had each grade walk around waving to the crowd.  All of the kids were so excited to finally be wearing their costumes and checking out what everyone else was wearing.  Here is Claire walking by:  (more on the costumes later)

 

Then it was time for 3rd grade to come by.  More of the parents knew who Andrew was rather than his friends.  Do you know?

 

They got out of school early that day, so we took the opportunity to take some pictures during the daylight.  Did you guess?  Andrew wanted to be Jim Harbaugh.  He is the 49ers head coach, of course!  We looked at lots of pictures online and rewound many games to get the look just right.  We were going for authentic right down to the pen around his neck. 

 

 

If you check this picture of Jim, this costume is pretty close!

 

 

The headset was his favorite part of the costume.

 

 

Later Andrew showed me where the coach likes to keep his play card and challenge flags.  It was cool that he was an original costume. 

 

 

 

Now for Claire - she wanted to be Minnie Mouse.  And coincidentally, so did Elaina!  Natalie and I were saying how it seemed like and awful lot to pay $40 each for a costume.  My mom heard us talking and said that she could make them.  What?!  Awesome!  We bought the ears and the shoes.

 

 

Here they are together.  They LOVE the shoes, mostly because they have a small heel.  They were so cute!

 Claire was the first to be ready with her Halloween bag and out the door.

 

Here is one of the only pictures you will see of Grant in his Halloween costume (and it isn't that great).  He just did not want to put on the hat or jacket.  We finally got him to just put on the jacket, but those dang reflective bands made it impossible to take a picture.

 

First, we went to the church for some trunk or treating.  Grant did not want to participate, until he finally figured out that they were giving out free candy!!  The kids did a couple of laps here and then we headed home.  Danny took Andrew and Claire out in the neighborhood for some more candy.  Grant and I stayed home to man the door.  We ended up having a lot of left over candy.   It is all too tempting and needs to go somewhere else!  I forgot to get picture of them sorting their candy and checking it all out.  Even after lots of sugar, they all went to bed easy.  They had gotten up early in their excitement and were really tired.  

 

This past weekend we were putting away the decorations and Grant did not want to put away the cat.  He loves this decoration and carried it around often.  With the not so fun pumpkin carving, dislike of anything costume related and us taking away his prized possession, let's hope that Grant has a better Halloween next year! 

Pumpkin carving

 

On Tuesday night it was finally time to carve the pumpkins.  There was a lot of excitement about this and deep thoughts about what face to carve.  The least favorite part of the process is cleaning out the inside of the pumpkins.  Andrew and Claire didn't seem to mind at all and started right in with cutting open the top.

 

Grant was also interested in this process and wanted to help cut. 

 

For the first time, Claire actually helped cut open her pumpkin.  She was very proud of herself.

 

 

 

 Then the scooping began....

 

 

...and then there were some problems.  Grant started to make funny faces and he kept gagging.  We thought maybe he was choking on something, but he wasn't.   

 

If you look closely at this picture, Grant is totally disgusted by the look of the pumpkin guts.  And then the gagging got worse.  We are pretty sure that he didn't like the smell of the pumpkins.  He never touched the guts, but before he actually threw up we decided that maybe pumpkin carving wasn't his thing.

 

So he grabbed his pumpkin and watched Thomas the train instead. 

 

 

Then it was time to sketch out what the face would look like. 

 

Andrew's pumpkins was pretty large so he had a lot of cutting to do.

 

The final product!  Andrew carved most of his by himself.  Here is his creation: 

 

 

Claire specifically wanted eyelashes.  She helped me carve the eyes, nose and mouth. 

 

They were both so excited to see them lit up.  Grant wasn't interested at all after his initial reaction.  He didn't even come to see them lit up.