john says i should title this post "halloween post"

Because he is creative like that.

I know that I am late to this party, but my internet was all broken, remember? So, a week late, you get the remainder of our Halloween festivities (well, the ones that made the blog-cut, anyway).

First there was the carving of the pumpkins we picked out at the patch. Pearl and I let the boys get out all the guts.


And while they carved...

(what?? you don't let your three-year-old wield large kitchen knives?)

... Pearl did what she does: licked and gummed.


After sucking on the outside of a pumpkin for quite some time and getting absolutely nothing out of it, I decided to give Pearl the top to one of the pumpkins so that she could suck on the inside edge and at least get a little raw pumpkin flavor.


Here is what we ended up with. George requested scary pumpkins, and I think we mostly delivered. John carved the giant, man-eating mouther, and I carved the evil eye guy.


Next up was the fall festival at our little school. If there is one lesson I have learned repeatedly as a teacher it is that the party days are always way more work and more tiring than the regular days. But I sure do love this little class of mine.


Remember when I alluded to lots of alliteration for us this Halloween? I was talking about my kids' costumes. We were all about "P"s this year-- I had a pirate, a peacock, and a pink poodle, and I must say, they rocked their little costumes out.

George got to dress up in his pirate (more specifically, Captain Hook) costume for the festival and parade at school, and it was so much fun for me to have my own child racing by me in the parade this year. His class sang some Halloween songs for us after, and I just still can't believe that my boy is old enough to be up there with all the other kids. Here are a couple of shots of Pea in her Peacock costume at the school and then G in the parade and singing with his class.

I was determined to get a few decent pictures of my kiddos in their costumes this year. I always have great intentions to do so, but things always get crazy on Halloween and I don't end up having the time to get any pictures with decent light. BUT on Saturday afternoon I had a few spare minutes (and even postponed Pearlie's nap a bit) to get the kids dressed up and pull out my camera. The rain threatened to ruin our efforts, but it held out just long enough to let us get a few shots. Here are my handsome pirate and sweet peacock.

I did not get any good pictures of them together, but here's the best I could do.

If you look closely you will notice the little raindrops starting to show up on Pearl's costume in those last pictures. It was rainy and pretty cold that evening for trick-or-treating, so we swapped out the Peacock for the much warmer Pink Poodle, and even though I was mildly obsessed with the Peacock, I have to say, Pearl makes a pretty darn cute poodle.

We went over to the church for a little trunk-or-treat action that ended up having nothing to do with trunks and more to do with buckets of candy on tables inside (thank you, rain). Whoever invented the whole trunk-or-treat thing was brilliant though-- best way ever to get large quantities of candy in small amounts of time.

The picture on the right is of Miss Poodle in the church, watching all of the costumed kids go by with much wonder. (And her cherubic cheeks just about kill me.)

Even though George scored more than enough candy at the church, he still wanted to go trick-or-treating to a few houses. We started out with our next-door neighbors in the drizzly cold, and although this picture is blurry, I really love it. Love the daddies holding the smallest kids, and the bigger kids walking ahead down the rainy street, and the movement that is trick-or-treating.

I was amazed at George's eagerness to continue trick-or-treating despite the cold. The other kids were freezing and done, but G wanted to keep going. So we did. I actually really loved walking along with him from house to house, reminding him to say "trick-or-treat," and greeting all our neighbors with my sweet little Captain Hook. John held Pearl the whole time and came along, too. My poor freezing Poodle, but we couldn't make her brother miss out on this once-a-year candy giving phenomenon, and John and I both wanted to be with George, too.

So we all trudged on together in the dark and the rain.

George got a LOT of candy. When we got home I introduced him to the fantastic world of dumping out and sorting all your candy to see how many of the good things you got. Pearl was crazy about all the bright colored wrappers and interesting things to grab.

I love this picture because George was trying so carefully to keep Pearl's grabby little hands at bay by sticking his leg out, but oh no, that was not going to stop her. And George is too nice to really get mad and take all the candy completely out of her reach.

See? Nevermind that the sucker still has its wrapper on.

Well good, now that I am caught up with all that (and we have the internet working at our house again), hopefully I can stay a little more current. I take way too many pictures.