Halloween came early....

....which thankfully means that it's gone early too.

I really hate Halloween. There are many reasons, but just trust me on it. I don't like to dress up, masks (even on kids) scare the crap out of me, and I hate spending tons of money on crappy costumes that are worn for an hour before they fall apart.

Luckily, we didn't spend a penny on costumes this year. A friend gave us a couple of ninja costumes that we thought that the boys could wear, but Sarah pounced on those. We had to perform some surgery on them, but we were able to pull together a decent looking ninja - but without a hood.

Emily wore my pajamas - totally her idea.

Jared wore the solider costume from last year.

Alex wore his old Optimus Prime one - which is definitely too small, but he wanted to wear it so we made it work one last time.

Daniel - used the police officer one again.

I think this is the third year for the soldier and police officer (there's a firefighter too that didn't get used this time) - I swore that the boys would just rotate those until they either outgrew them or they fell apart, and so far it's working. Although Alex's father spent a small fortune and bought the Optimus Prime one for him last year.

So we went downtown for the trick or treating. Yes, it was tonight. This is the official - "close down Main Street, beg for candy from the businesses, and run around these 4 blocks with your costumes on and not worry about getting hit by a car night". It's always a madhouse, and we end up spending more time standing in line with some obnoxious teenager who is too old to be trick or treating in line behind us the entire time.

I was actually able to have a friend get a group shot.
That doesn't happen very often.

After we got home, the kids went through their loot and I of course, took a few pieces ("Hey, look! Fortune Cookies! You guys don't want them!" *snatch*) and then I made Emily get in the shower to get the orange hairspray out of her hair. They all ate enough candy to get a good sugar buzz and then the boys went to bed. The girls are still "working on cleaning their room" which means that they're sitting in there doing nothing but giggling and getting in trouble.

Tomorrow's plans? Church. That's it. Hopefully we can actually have most of the day to do absolutely nothing - but I'm pretty sure that will change.

Frantic Friday Fun

The older 3 kids didn't have school today, but the younger two did - so it was nice to spend the day with the older ones doing stuff that we don't usually get to do.

The day started with Daniel's Halloween parade at playschool this morning. One of the teachers asked my kids if they'd like to hand out the candy, so Daniel thought that it was pretty cool that his big brother was handing out some of the treats.

We went out for lunch after we took Daniel to preschool this afternoon.

Then we went shopping to get the girls some new jeans, which they so desperately needed. I wasn't really thrilled about spending the money, but they really did *need* them. We found some good sales, so that helped, but dang they're expensive!

After we got done shopping, we went back and picked the boys up from their schools and then came home. We had dinner, and then we had to go back out again to go to a Family Fall Fun Night or something like that for Boy Scouts - now that Jared is in that, it just adds to the hectic schedule that we already have.

Anyway, the kids had fun playing silly games and winning even sillier prizes.

On the way home, we were greeted by another incredible sunset.

Then when we got home, I was called to the bathroom and told to look down the drain in the sink, where I saw this lovely sight. *sigh* So off I went to get a pair of pliers and a bucket to perform surgery on the plumbing.

I was not impressed by the treasures that I found in the murky water of the trap. *barf*











The final (for now) project of the evening was to work on a Halloween costume for a truck for tomorrow. I might have procrastinated a bit on this one...but I'm not the only one. But it's about as done as it's going to be. It's a cape (because every superhero truck needs a cape) and it's huge - I didn't make the cape part, but I was assigned the "S" and the crosses, which were made out of this horrible shiny gold faux-sequined stretchy stuff, and it was awful to work with, but it'll do at this point.

Tomorrow, we have a meeting to go to from 10:00am until 3:00pm - it's a Policy Council thing, and I have no desire to go, but I'm obligated. Luckily they're providing childcare...

But as soon as we get out of that meeting, we have to get ready for trick-or-treat and meet everyone from the church to get the costume on the truck, and then deal with all of the chaos of the Safe Walk....and I know that there was something else that we were supposed to do tomorrow but for the life of me I can't remember what it was.

All I know is that I ran out of Diet Pepsi today. Tomorrow's looking ugly already.