☻☻ Halloween!!! ☻☻

Last year we had a great Halloween with Aunt Amy's family in Queen Creek (now San Tan Valley).  Her neighborhood has an awesome block party where they have some sort of a dinner starting about an hour or two before dark (around 4:30pm) and then trick-or-treating starts at 7pm after the sun sets.

It was a little tricky last year with three (and one on the way that no one else knew about ;-) ) but, with the help of Aunt Lisa and soon-to-be-Uncle Travis, we got the job done!

Halloween found James out at the ranch again this year.  He left Wednesday morning and Melissa (bless your heart) came over the first two nights to help me get all the kids to bed.  I wasn't sure I was emotionally and physically ready to haul four kids up to Amy's by myself four days later but I figured that there was no way I could take them to our ward trunk-or-treat by myself and this way they could be with family and I could have help and they could still get candy.

I had initially hoped to be out by 10:00 but when even I didn't wake up until almost 8am, I knew we weren't going to make it.  But we did get out just after noon.

We had a bit of a rough day the day before (I"ll post about the tempera paint incident later) but suffice it to say I gave the kids dinner and their bath early and we had a little movie night and Trevy got to wear the squishy pink curlers for the first time.  She found them in my bathroom about a month ago and has wanted to use them ever since!

I took a few pictures while I was filling up.  The car was LOADED!!! 

Girls in the back...

 Guys in the front.  Have fruit snacks and water bottles; will travel.

 Sweet little Timmy.  We only had to stop for one suctioning in Oro Valley and he slept the rest of the way.  Hadn't thought about it until then, but it works out very well for him to sleep when we are traveling because he doesn't make as many secretions when he's not moving around a lot.

 I had just enough time to feed Timmy when we got there
before it was time to get every dressed for the Halloween party.

Princess Trevy.

 Contractor Landon chasing Dillon the Green Monster.  (Soooo cute!)

 Aunt Shesha held Timmy for me while I got everyone (including him) dressed up.

 Cutest little frog!  (Never got the picture of the two of them together but he and Trevy were A Princess and a Frog.  I took cute green jammies for Timmy to wear to be all green but it was too hot for them.)

 The eyes came to me in a final moment of brilliance.  I had been thinking and thinking for weeks trying to figure out how to make Timmy a frog and saw these in my craft drawer while I was taking out the foam pages to cut out feet and the light came on.  Unfortunately, they didn't stay on too well.  One kept popping off and a lady told me I had a cute alien.  =(

 Makayla the hippie.  Peace.

 Unloading Aunt Amy's Yukon at the barbecue.

 Ahhh...there's the contractor look!  Landon found this hat in the dress-up box
two days before and it was instant Halloween success!

 Cinderella Callie wasted no time sniffing out the sugar!

 And Timmy was a good baby and slept through dinner.

 The group shot.  Kaden cracks me up.  Last year he was a geezer, this year he was a...

 Easier to tell here?

 How 'bout here? 

 Okay, he's a homeless man!

 A close up of the cute green monster.

 Grandma helped with the trick-or-treating.

 There were probably about six driveways with games set up in them.  One was a cake walk, another was bobbing for apples, another eating doughnuts off string, a pumpkin carving contest (I won a pizza for Amy's family with mine) and probably another few I'm forgetting, but I thought this was great.  Fortune telling.

 The fortune teller's name is Aaron.  Love the play on words!

 Lisa helped Landon again.  (She walked him around last year.  Next year she'll have her own little girl so I don't know what I'm going to do!  Might have to keep James home.  ☺)

 Kaden used one of the empty Cheetos bags from dinner to collect candy.  Way to recycle, buddy! 

 Grandma looped a glow stick around Timmy's frog eyes to help keep them closer together
but it dangled in his eyes so we had to take it off.

 Uncle Travis helped Callie again.  Many thanks, Johnsons!

Amy had signed up to bring a desser and I had made up some cupcakes the night before with a package of cake mix the kids had poked their fingers into.  When I was planning on being there around noon, I was thinking that would give the kids something to do decorating them (thinking pumpkin graveyard here) before they needed to get their costumes on.  Well, we ran out of time so Amy decorated a pan's worth and called it good.  These were left over. Dillon found them when we returned from trick-or-treating.  Guess he really is my kid's cousin.  Note the single finger poke in each cupcake.

I hadn't planned on leaving as late as I did but I didn't want to have to haul everything to spend the night.  Not to mention that nights have been a bit of a nightmare with three bedrooms, can't imagine I would be more rested in the morning after sharing a single room with all my kids.

We headed home around 9:15pm and I had to stop to feed Timmy again on the way.  Fortunately, he ate in 20 minutes and fell back asleep after I strapped him back into his carseat.

The twins fell asleep by 10:30 but when I looked back to see if I could turn Mary Poppins off (this was the first my kids have ever seen it, just because they wouldn't sit through anything with live actors until now) and Trevy's eyes were wide open until after 11!!!

Happy to report that she did finally succumb and I had the joy of transferring four sleeping kiddos from car to bed.

 Love this shot of Landon.  What a sweet sleeper!

 She did have underwear on.

 The curlers worked really well.

Another fun Halloween.  I'm pretty sure we'll be back in San Tan Valley again next year!