Lions and tigers and crayons, oh my!

Trick or Treat!

The treat is that I'm actually blogging while the pictures are still fresh off the camera. The trick is. . .  trying not to smile when you look at the pictures.

Simon really wanted to be a train engineer, or a train. Yes, more trains. I mean, I love trains but c'mon, I have to draw the line somewhere, right?

So, a few days before Halloween I sat Simon down in front of the computer with me and we searched and searched through hundreds and possibley thousands of costumes. Luckily, in those pages and pages of costumes, he found one that was as cool as a train costume and simple enough that I could make it for him. (yay!!!)

A little bit of felt, flannel, cardstock, and velcro later we had this:

 Ta Da! The cutest green crayon on the block!

 I am happy to say that he loved his costume so much I could barely get him to take it off.

And if you are wondering, yes, his favorite color is green.

Ryan wore the lion costume I made 3 years ago.  The one I slaved over to sew on all the yarn for hair, just to learn that Simon hated the hat and wouldn't wear it.

It was even worse with Ryan. I couldn't even hold it on his head long enough to take a picture. And when I finally bribed him with candy and trains and he finally put it on for about 2 seconds, my camera battery died!!!

He was SO mad at me for making him wear the "Ryan Lion hat".  I gave up when he started ripping out the yarn hair. lol.

He made the cutest little Ryan the Lion, even without the mane.

He did like his tail. 

Saturday, we threw the annual Hall family Hall-oween party at our place. Everything was kind of last minute since I haven't been feeling all that great.
 These are the graveyard cupcakes I put together for the party. They were scrumptious chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter & cream cheese frosting rolled in crushed Reese's puffs (for dirt) and topped with white chocolate-dipped pretzel and marshmallow "bones"!

 Spooky!

Almost as scary as Simon's scary crayon face.

On Saturday after the party we took all of the kids to our ward Trunk-or-Treat. I left my camera behind so I have no pictures of all the fun stuff that went on there. There was tons more food, a witches' kissing booth (where they gave out chocolate kisses), a fish pond, a big spinning wheel, a pumpkin walk, and a donut on a string booth. Simon tried the donut-on-a-string game. So. Funny.

Everett, Keaton, Ezra, Alison, and Bailey all came along too. We all enjoyed dressing up, I wore my pirate costume from last year and Jeremiah dressed up as an old fat man! He had the best costume of the night and he threw it together in approximately 2 minutes.  Everyone thought he was the Ricola man. lol.

Good times.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Pumpkin Guts!

It's been a week since Halloween already and I'm finally getting around to posting my Halloween pics. I had some cute pics that I couldn't resist showing off. We had a great Halloween! I took my boys to the Library's Halloween party where Simon did some crafts and we got to show off in the costume parade. They offered Simon some candy after leaving but instead of picking a Tootsie Roll he chose a pencil. Yep, weird.

Simon couldn't decide what he wanted to be, a lion or Thomas the train. Halloween morning we dressed him as a lion and that night he opted for the Thomas costume. I was so glad because Thomas is a million times easier to put on and take off. In this picture he was really mad at his Auntie Marie for wanting to take a picture with him. I don't think he knew who she was ;o) He thought she was a strange fairy lady. Ryan didn't mind though.

For Halloween night, we went to a trunk-or-treat with Jeremiah's sister Karissa. Simon loved it because he got to play with his favorite cousins, Everett and Keaton. I loved Keaton's costume. He was a soldier. He didn't want to wear his helmet so you could see his bandage on his head from his recent surgery. He looked like a wounded soldier, so Karissa made him his own purple heart badge! I also have to give props to Veronica's costume. It was truly last-minute. Who would have though that socks and a headband would make such good dog ears?

Growing up in small town, AZ my dad and our family had HUGE pumpkin gardens. I remember filling up the back of my dad's pickup to the brim with pumpkins and taking them to a building downtown to sell them. There must have been hundreds of pumpkins! After all the pumpkin experience I had, I am a terrible pumpkin carver. To be honest I rarely carved pumpkins at home. We always painted them instead. Well, in the true spirit of Halloween, Simon and I carved a pumpkin together this year. I cut off the top and let Simon see the "pumpkin guts" inside. I reached my hand in and started to pull out the seeds and invited him to help (thinking that he would love to get his hands dirty). He was really afraid of it! I tried to help him out but when I touched him with my slimy, pumpkin covered hands he had a melt-down. He just said "Mom, wash hands!", "Don't wike pumpkin guts!" So I washed him off and got him a big spoon to scrape the seeds out with.

Here are the finished creations! Mine is the dog and Jeremiah did the silly face. He was pretty excited to carve his pumpkin. He even got out the dremel to carve the mouth. I wish we had pics of them lit up. The smile looked really awesome!

Can't wait 'till next year. I have to out-do Jeremiah's pumpkin!