Trick or Treat Festivities

Due to past early pumpkin demise, I put off carving pumpkins until about five days before Halloween.  I saw on pinterest someone put glow sticks in their pumpkins instead of candle, and I have also learned that the special pumpkin carving knives they put in the kits work so much better than just plain ole kitchen knives, so we headed to our local dollar store and picked up a few of each.  (Next year I will need to get more of the knives, as the cheap ones both broke on the first pumpkin.)  Garrett wanted a simple Texas A&M, and Tripp picked out a very intricate Thomas the Train pumpkin.  Unfortunately for him the knives didn't make it to his pumpkin, so I convinced him that just doing Thomas' face would be good.  He loved it, Garrett tried to say it didn't look like Thomas, and was immediately silenced by the stare of his mother, while Tripp was comforted by the fact that dad thought his Thomas pumpkin was really cool.

At this point, I realized that it was going to be a very long process to get this pumpkin clean...

This is yucky mom!

I think I might need help!

Why do you think this is fun?

Blue glow sticks, we figured out, green and pink work the best.

I went on costume strike this year.  Garrett, my collector of all stuff, has more costumes than imaginable, or than he has even ever worn!  I told the boys that they could use any of the costumes we already had.  Tripp automatically focused in on Spider-man  and Garrett fluctuated between a few of them.  Luckily for him we had a few things to go to that required them to dress up.

The weekend before Halloween we went trick or treating with our friends in their neighbor hood.  This year with day light savings time pushed back, it was actually light the whole time, and it was so nice!  We ended up having two Spider-men  Flash, and a train engineer   This is our usual "big candy haul" of the year, and it did not disappoint.

Watch out, Spider-man is packing heat!!!

Flash is so fast, he was blurry.

We also tried out trick or treating at the Cowgirl Museum with some other friends.  They had food trucks for lunch, and trick or treating inside.  Great concept, but cranky kiddos and very little candy made the whole thing in Garrett's words, "Not quite worth all the trouble."  The whole day started off bad by Tripp "calling" the Superman costume, reminding Garrett that he had secretly planned on using it all along, followed by lots of Garrett tears for not calling it first, then a celebration when it was WAY to big for Tripp.  We ended up with a Superman, a Batman construction worker, and Sleeping Beauty.

Superman, riding a bronc.

Disciplining his horse.

Taken from the National Cowgirl Museums Facebook page

Notice how many times he had posed for this movie poster...

Taken from the National Cowgirl Museums Facebook page

At school they can't celebrate Halloween, but they can dress up for a story book parade.  Both boys were able to participate this year.  Tripp liked the Batman construction worker look and stuck with that one, but Garrett decided to go with Captain Cody from Star Wars.  Due to Tripp's love for all things vehicular, finding a construction worker book was fairly easy.  Garrett ended up taking a book that if you looked on one page, in the far background, maybe even squinted a little, you could see him.  Captain Cody is one of the clone troopers, and even though we have several books with "storm troopers" those, as I learned pretty sternly last night, are not the same. (Even if they look pretty much identical!)

Love his smile!!!

Sweet Garrett, he went as Captain Cody because he was technically going as dad!!!

Half the battle is getting them lined up...

...actually smiling and looking at the camera is the other half.  Tripp's class.

Garrett's class.

On Halloween night, we don't go any where!! It is awesome!! I also re-purpose our acquired candy, and the boys give it all away to the kids that trick or treat in our neighborhood   Each of them gets to pick out just a few things that they really like and then we give all the candy mom doesn't want around yucky candy away.  It is a great plan, and has so far been very successful.  So after a dinner of spider web pizza, the boys showered, got dressed and waited in great anticipation for our first trick or treaters.  Last year was a really slow year, so we were hoping for a better turn out.  It was better, however, we were the last house down a little ways with our light on, so we were skipped a lot.  The boys ended up yelling, "We do have candy!", "Our candy is the best!", "Please come get our candy!", at them to bring in business   After all was handed out, we each ate a piece, brushed our teeth and I put the kids to sleep.  Now for me to raid the left overs for my favorites!!!

Waiting...

Someone trick or treating gave them the necklaces. 

This face says, "Please come to my house!!!"