All Hallow's Eve

That evening we had an early dinner with these fine people. I decided that Black Bean Soup or "Ghoul Goulash" is going to become a Halloween tradition for us. The food was good and the company was even better! We're excited that Connor has finally obtained "Uncle" status now that he and Jessie are recently engaged.

Here's the rundown on how we ended up as a squid, Hammerhead, Great White, and scuba divers. Early in September I asked the boys what they wanted to be for Halloween. I was kind of hoping I could convince them to be pumpkins. Kerry dressed Jayce and his siblings up as pumpkins when he was younger and they were the "Porter Pumpkin" patch and I've wanted to copy it ever since I saw the picture.

When I was offering suggestions, I'd say things like, "Well, let's see you could be a ghost, a PUMPKIN, a witch, a PUMPKIN, a pirate. Do you think it would be fun to be a PUMPKIN??" Jack started buying it, but Cameron comes out of nowhere and says, "I want to be a SQUID!"

A squid?! Yikes. How do we do a squid? I looked it up when I got home and after looking at a couple of pictures that popped up on google I thought, "YES. You will be a squid!" The costumes looked hilarious, and little kids in funny costumes is what I'm all about on Halloween.

It wasn't hard to get Ben and Jack to choose a type of shark to be, although Jack did go through a stage when he was really fixated on being a witch. I had to really talk up the Great White shark idea then.

I did the Great White shark first because I thought it would be the easiest--wrong! I had to re-sew and re-size several times, which did not pump me up for figuring out the squid hat and the Hammerhead. Surprisingly to me, the Hammerhead actually ended up being the easiest, and the squid hat really wasn't that bad either.

Benson. Oh my goodness, Benson!!!

Oh, Jackie Boy.

  

Kids in costumes!!!

The one that began it all:

  

The one on the left right there is Cameron showing off his squid "hooks." I finished the tentacles and excitedly said, "Cameron! Come check them out, they're done!" to which Cameron said, "But Mom, where are the hooks the squid uses?" I guess Colossal Squids have hooks on their tentacles to catch prey. I told him to imagine some.

Trick-or-Treating was great. We love going around in our area because we see so many friends out. Dream neighborhood people! There were a couple of houses where the people passing out the candy dressed up and acted pretty creepy. Jack was terrified and very timid to go to any other doors, Cameron proceeded with caution, and Ben walked right up, got candy, and said thank you. They are all so different! We get the biggest kick out of seeing their personalities come out.

The night was not without tears, unfortunately. One house was giving out cans of soda and Cameron saw some kids with them and really wanted to go there. I told him we could go on the way back since it would be on the way home, but when we finally got there they were out of the sodas! The regular sized candy bars and bags of chips that were now being handed out there were of no worth to Cameron who had his heart set on soda, so despite our trying to reasonably talk through it with him and our efforts to talk about being grateful that anyone was offering to give him anything, he pretty much cried the whole way home. Happy Halloween! Sometimes being a 4 year old is hard.

I'm all about letting kids be kids and how fun Halloween is, but I do get a little anxious about letting our three little boys eat a bucket load of candy over the next couple of weeks. I just can't do it. So, this year we tried doing the Switch Witch and it worked great! We explained to the boys that the Switch Witch is a witch who collects candy left out on doorsteps Halloween night and leaves a present in exchange. She eats the candy all year long, which makes her green, but she loves the candy too much to eat something else. 

We told them it was up to them. They could choose 7 pieces to keep and leave the rest on the porch so that the Switch Witch would leave a toy, or they could keep all of their candy. They all chose to see what the Switch Witch would leave for them in place of the candy. One of those parenting "whew!" moments. It was great, because then all of the later trick-or-treaters took the left overs.

I was really nervous that they'd wake up in the morning and wish that they had kept their candy instead, but they loved the simple toys they got and that was that. Huge relief! This will definitely be another new Halloween tradition for us.

Jayce and I put the boys to bed and watched The Village. Signs and The Village are just about the only "scary" movies we will watch and we really like them both. Yay M. Night Shyamalan. I could write a post about The Village. Maybe I will.

And because I loved all the pictures we got from family on Halloween and because kids in costumes are great, here's the rest of our families! I love it!