Halloween Weekending

Happy November!!  It's my favorite month.  I just love Fall and my birthday is the 16th.  Such a fun time of year.  Our weekend turned out to be pretty unexpected:


1. It snowed.

2. We had to cancel a fun weekend out of town due to snow.  Kevin got us Notre Dame tickets to go up and tailgate and attempt our first Notre Dame game as a family.  He said it would be a great way to kick off my birthday month.  Well temps dropped dramatically in Indiana this week after we bought our tickets so we had to cancel our trip.  It just didn't sound like fun to tailgate, walk around campus and try to enjoy the game in that kind of weather.

3. We all have coughs/colds/sore throats and lost my voice for 4 days and counting.

4. I got to decorate for Thanksgiving since we ended up being home all weekend.
 

Although our weekend looked like tons of cancelled plans, it was still pretty great.  I watched a few Hallmark Christmas movies, got a new iphone, the kids were super helpful taking down Halloween decorations and putting up our Thanksgiving turkeys and we had fun at home.

I have a fun little recap for you today:

Halloween Photo Shoot.
The kids LOVED their costumes this year.  They had never been so excited to jump into characters.  Their costumes fit their personalities to a t.  Olive was a very sassy Bo Peep and Fletcher was Buzz Lightyear.  Both from Toy Story 4.  They got lots of compliments on their costumes.  Buzz's jet pack lit up so it was great for trick or treating after dark.

Our city always trick or treats on October 30 and 31.  We looked at the weather and realized it would be much colder and snowier on the 31st.  So we threw on our coats and costumes and headed out the door.  The kids walked the entire route and got tons of candy.  They got to go door to door as well as answer our door to tons of trick or treaters.
 

We got home and Kevin suggested we carve pumpkins.  They turned out great!

On Halloween, I loaded up my supplies and Fletcher and headed to Olive's classroom.  I planned all the games for her party and had to run them with no voice.  Not ideal, but we still had a great time.  I love helping out with her classroom and being the room mom.

I don't usually bring Fletcher with me, but daytime childcare is hard to come by most days.  He promised to act like a first grader and he kept up his end of the bargain.  It was tons of fun!

Halloween Party Games for 1st graders:
The Claw
Use the skeleton salad tongs to grab Halloween items to put in the pumpkin.  The kids each got two turns to see how many items they could get into the pumpkin.  They could not use their hands, only the skeleton hands.

Ghost Stack:
I drew ghost faces on a package of clear cups.  The kids had to attempt to build the tallest ghost stack.  The winner was a little girl who got her tower 12 rows high!  The kids LOVED this game.

Mini Pumpkin Ring Toss
The kids had to put on the crazy eye glasses, pick up the stack of ten rubber bands and try to toss them onto the pumpkin stems.  The kids really loved this game.  It was harder than they thought and they worked together to collect and count their rings.

Crazy Hair Day idea:
It happened to also be crazy hair day.  We added a pipe cleaner spider to Olive's favorite headband.  It was a super quick way to make her feel festive and fun.  You just need 5 pipe cleaners.  Wrap all 4 legs around the headband, bend them to look like spider legs and then take the last pipe cleaner around the middle to look like the spider body.  If this wasn't 2 minutes before we walked out the door for school, I probably would have hot glued on some googly eyes.

Story time.
I found this cute little kitty at story time at the library.  He loves going to story time and science class.  He sits and listens and loves doing the activities.  It's fun to see him turning into a big kid right before my eyes and it gives me an opportunity to connect with other moms.

Church on Sundays
The weather was GORGEOUS yesterday!  We unintentionally matched for church and then played in the leaves several times.  Fletcher has also hit a growth spurt and suddenly doesn't fit in his Fall clothes.  We had to try on several outfits before we found one that would fit for church.  I need to swap out his clothes ASAP.

We ALL LOVE FALL!!

Kevin's been requesting an apple pie for weeks.  It's not my favorite pie to make because it takes a long time to do all the steps.  We have now made two trips to the apple orchard this season.  I had just enough time to pull this together yesterday.  It was so good.  The kids helped with the apples and are not a fan of the pie.  More for the grown ups!

Hope you had a great weekend!