Halloween Fun

We had so many fun activities surrounding Halloween this year. I wanted the kids to wear their dragon costumes again (it would have been the third year in a row), but Lily refused and Jack couldn't fit into his anymore. So we had to improvise with last minute costumes. Lily had a red riding hood dress from a couple years back so I made her a little cape and she was happy with it!

The weekend before Halloween, Luke and Jack went camping up in the mountains with the boy scout troop. The girls and I spent the day together. We went trick-or-treating at the local shopping center. One of the shops handing out candy was a reptile store and they had real cockroaches mixed in the with the candy. Lily didn't want their candy.

 Afterwards we came back home to decorate pumpkins

 Then we went to a friends birthday party

 Papa surprised us with a visit. He took us out to pizza

 And then we went trick-or-treating again around another shopping mall. It was Papa's first time trick-or-treating in 50 years or so. Everyone had a blast!

And later that night, several girl friends came over to my place for a girls night of games. It was a great time!

The next day (after the boys got home from camping), I took the kids to the farm for their version of trick-or-treating. They have several large doors set up where kids can knock at the door and get candy. It was pretty packed, but the kids had fun

The whole gang with their candy

Also, this month Jack has started doing the challenge spelling words. The regular list was too easy for him, so he's been getting tougher words. They are pretty hard, but he aces his test every week! We are so proud of him.

 The kids spent some of the warmer days in the backyard making leaf piles. I love watching them play so nicely together.

 That week Jack had a Halloween party at school on Friday. Since his dragon costume didn't fit, we had to improvise. Here he is in his skeleton jammies with some face paint:

 Josie even had fun at the party

 Jack's class dressed up for Halloween

 After school, we met Luke at his work for their work trick-or-treating. The kids got to go around to all the cubes and get candy.

After that we dropped Jack and Lily off at Nani's house for a special night. Nani and Papi had tickets to VeggieTales on stage and then the kids were spending the night.

Luke and I took advantage of this and planned a really fun date night with some friends. We all decided to dress up for the evening. I dressed up as my favorite beer "Snowdrop" which is a version of Snow White. My mom made me this great costume!

Josie was my poison apple

She couldn't take her eyes off my black hair!

First we went to dinner with friends downtown and then we headed over to the Enigma Room. It is a room where they lock you in for 60 minutes and you have to escape. It was amazingly fun and we almost didn't make it out. Luke ended up finding the last clue with one minute to spare. We learned (after the fact) that only 15% of the groups escape. We were pretty happy:

Most of the other couples had to head home afterwards to relieve babysitters. But we were FREE! We hit up two more bars and it was 2am by the time we got home! Here are Luke and Leif at one bar:

The next morning we were able to sleep in a little, but Josie still woke us up around 8am. Luke and I did a 5mile run together and then we had lunch and went to pick up the kiddos. We took them straight to Loveland for a Walk in the Woods with some friends. Here are the kids before the walk

Starting the walk

Along the walk, they are greeted by several fairy tale creatures. Here they are with a wolf

And Dorothy and the Scarecrow

And Alice with the Cheshire rabbit

A fairy

At the end the kids got to meet the Big Bad Wolf. Lily was too scared to pose with him, so the other Red Riding Hood (Charlene) posed instead.

Why is it so hard for kids to smile nicely at the camera?

After the walk we headed over to Grimm Brothers Brewery. These are the beers that we fashioned our costumes after. You can see the pictures of the beers in the background. I think we did a pretty awesome job with these costumes but they didn't give us free beers...

We were so exhausted by night time that Luke just took the kids around the neighborhood for a quick trick-or-treat session and I turned off all the lights and hid at home.