At the very beginning of October when our neighbors across the street tied a big white sheet over their lampost equipped with a green lightbulb, Brian took Cumorah out on a night walk to see the spooky ghost up close. Since then she has been obsessed. Everything became 'pookie' (spooky). She began to notice and love everything ghost, pumpkin, bat, black cat, etc. etc. She also caught on very quickly to candy corn. Ghosts were probably the favorite. Every night she would point out the window and say, "Oooo, pooky. Ghost. Got me. Heeheehee..." When Rivers received a present in the mail from Auntie Amy, her very own GHOST trick-or-treat bag from pottery barn kids (name embroidered and all), it was fortunate that the neighbors had put up additional decorations as Cumorah's trick-or-treat bag from Auntie Amy last year is a jack-o-lantern. We were able to nip jealousy issues in the bud by pointing out the jack-o-lanterns across the street.
The ghost came down a couple nights after Halloween. Very sad. Cumorah kept talking about it and even mentioned it in her prayers that evening. In fact, she even said something about it last night, "Ghost gone?" Halloween was especially fun this year since Cumorah was old enough to know what was going on. Here's a taste of some of the festivities...
A couple weeks before Halloween we had the missionaries, Abram (a new friend from church) and Leilani over for dinner. I had this fantabulous idea to make haunted houses out of chocolate graham crackers. OK so it wasn't ALL my fantabulous idea, I saw a picture in a HyVee magazine when I was grocery shopping. Anyway, I made Brian and our guests make one. They were a little hesitant at first, but once they got started it was awesome. They seemed to enjoy themselves. Everyone's creativity was alive and well, so were all their sugar-cravings. Elder Norris was sitting too close to the candy corn. Elder Noriss' companion (sorry, if you ever see this, I'm horrible at remembering missionaries' last names) was River's personal holder for the evening. She wasn't feeling too well, poor thing. Abram became a master haunted tower embellisher. The detail on the finished product far exceeded my expectations. We got the table cleared for a picture and then right before I could click, the tower collapsed inward. Eventually the top fell off onto the table. It was an amazing work of art while it lasted. (You were right about hot gluing the graham crackers, Lisa. A stroke of genius. Nobody eats the thing anyway.)
Cumorah had a ton of fun decorating her very own haunted house that her daddy helped her build. At first she carefully placed each M&M in the frosting. By the time she was finished, the marshmallow ghost who took up residence inside the spooky house was buried in a monstrous pile of Count Chocula cereal.
We also carved pumpkins that night. Brian saw the eyes for the alien pumpkin on his favorite site, OhGizmo. He made them. Right now they have yellow bulbs hooked up and are the eyes for a turkey drawn on a cardboard box. Cumorah loved to point at the "spooky eyes" when they were in the pumpkin and is now equally pleased with our spooky turkey.
Cumorah and I made ghost cupcakes to share with our neighbors. Can you tell which one Cumorah decorated? Hers ended up with a mommy and a baby ghost cupcake, but I didn't realize until too late. Her baby ghost is without a face. Fortunately, she handled the disappointment pretty well.
On the 29th we went to the little Halloween Party that DMU (Brian's school) puts on for the families. It was really fun. They had little games set up for the kids to play, they had prizes and they had kid-friendly snacks. Since Cumorah was dressed as a chicken and Rivers an egg, Brian and I naturally dressed as egg farmers. Brian came downstairs from the library with his straw hat and his egg carton to join us at the party. We feel so blessed to be attending such a family-friendly school. It is very thoughtful of them to facilitate family activities.
See the other little chicken we met at the party? I just think he's really cute. We tried to get a picture of both Cumorah and him, but Cumorah was too busy with other things.
After the school party, Brian went back to the library to study and the girls and I went to trunk-or-treat at the church. Since I was by myself and we hadn't had dinner yet (so I wanted to be able to leave early if needed) and I hadn't planned on decorations, I did not decorate our trunk. Instead we just walked around to about five cars to give Cumorah her first experience at trick-or-treating.
Then we found some friends, gave Rivers away for a while, and settled down between their cars with a our bowl of treat-sized cans of play-do. This was when the fun really started for Cumorah. She started calling out like a street vendor, "Kids, kids, play-d0! Boys! Girl! Play-do!" She put the cans of play-do in all the treat bags that came her way. It was really fun to hear her calling to everyone, and it was really nice to not go home with a bag too, too full of candy. She got just enough prizes and treats from the day's activities to pour out on the floor and play with before bedtime.
In Des Moines, no one goes trick-or-treating on Halloween. They go the night before, Beggar's Night. A bit different. They've been doing it since the 1930's or so. I like it because it has a time limit. Trick-or-Treating from 6pm to 8pm. I didn't plan on taking the girls trick-or-treating. I dressed them up for pictures and for passing out candy. While we were taking pictures out on the lawn a little before six, our neighbors across the street and our next door neighbor saw us. They told us we had to come over after we were done. So we went and got Cumorah's treat bag and visited our sweet neighbor Karen next door and our fun Grandma and Grandpa neighbors across the street and their nice next-door-neighbor Valerie whom we met for the first time that night. I really enjoyed that.
The actual day of Halloween found us making two pizzas for Pizza Night since Grandmommy and Auntie Crystal were going to be making it into Des Moines just in time for dinner. The only Halloween-type fun we had were pumpkin straws with dinner and Halloween marshmallow smore's nuked in the microwave.
1 comment:
Very cute.
Mom H
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