BOO!

A very busy day Halloween turned out to be!! We started at Jonathan's school, where, despite my misgivings about 14 pre-k kids carving their own pumpkins, enough parents showed up to make it quite a success! And despite the fact that it LOOKS like Jonathan carved the pumpkin "all by himself", let's just say, he did MOST of it. Okay, SOME of it. He had a good time, and I did most of the finishing touches!


After carving, the kids got to climb into their costumes. Here, Jonathan is a tiger. I was surprised he decided to dress in this particular costume - I had borrowed a few from a friend, and he didn't seem to like the tiger much. But once we got to school and I showed him the choices I'd brought, that's what he picked.


And so they all lined up for a photograph - there's my little tiger all the way to the left. Then they had a big parade and a party in the classroom. Then, we got to take the little sugared-up goblins home. Oh, the joys of parenting!


The parade was outside this year - it was a stellar day - almost 70 degrees! Why am I chasing a pumpkin, rather than watching the parade? The pumpkin is Matthew. He decided he'd rather run around the track and the football field than wait for his brother to march by with all the elemetary school. So guess who gets to run him down?

Back home for dinner. Trick-or-treat started at 6pm, so while we got Jonathan into his SECOND costume of the day (for trick-or-treating, he decided to be the alligator/dinosaur), we let Matthew go to town on a cupcake. Mistake. By the time he was done, cupcake was everywhere. Oh well - what can you do right? We just put his costume back on - good thing they're washable!


We head outside to the yard for a few minutes, where the pumpkin takes off again. Daddy caught up to him trying to get into the shed! (Which, btw, we just a brand new coat of paint a few weeks ago! Sharp, huh?)


Finally, pumpkin AND dinosaur corralled, off we go.


It was truly a great night for trick-or-treating! The weather was great, and lots of neighbors were out and about. Mark and I both went with the kids - it probably would've been pretty hard for just one of us to manage both kids anyway - and we took a big basket of candy with us so when we met up with other trick-or-treaters, we would just give them the candy on the road and tell them not to bother going up our long, steep driveway because we weren't there! As it turned out, good thing we both went - those hills are steep! Between three things of candy, the wagon, the dog (another mistake, but we're learning!) and the two little guys, we about had our hands full! But the kids LOVED it and didn't even complain too much when Mark and I had finally reached our breaking point and told them we were going home: LAST HOUSE! When we got home, Jonathan stripped off his costume immediately, but Matthew stayed in his long enough for us to get a few pictures! Here's one of him checking out his loot, and another of him giggling over his brother's antics!

So anyway, that was Halloween '08. All in all, a great day for the little guys! We were thinking that since Halloween was Friday, then on Saturday we wouldn't make any plans, just let the sugar wear off and have a slow day. But that didn't happen! We got up the next morning, noticed the kids were really kind of "normal" and decided to take off for Morgantown to do some early Christmas shopping! We spent a long day messing around Barnes and Noble and Target and a few other places, mostly wasting time since we never seem to remember that taking both kids shopping with us is NEVER time well-spent. But we did manage to get a few gifts bought, another two or three researched and priced, and we finished the day with a stop at the West Virginia Brewing Company. Quick stop at Arby's drive through, and home we went. All in all - a great weekend! Looking forward to Mark having the day off tomorrow so we can get some more landscaping/yardwork done...did I mention we were KILLING ourselves in the yard these days? Happy November!