More Halloween, just in case you haven't had enough

For two whole weeks before Halloween, I was swamped with my regular work, so I wasn't able to start making costumes until Wednesday night. I won't go into details, but two days and not much sleep later, I finished costumes for my nieces and for Brielle and Max. Aaron wore his tornado costume from last year, I just added some small farm animals on it to make it more realistic.

Here are my nieces, the Queen of Hearts and Oscar the grouch.

I can't believe my brother wanted his sweet little two year old daughter to dress up as Oscar the grouch. He says that she's grouchy. I don't believe him, whenever she's at my house, she is a sweet little angel. I told him he was full of it, and he said "You don't live with her."

I haven't been able to get the pictures of my kids in their costumes into the computer. I have to have the teenager do it for me because when I try to load them into the computer, I just can't seem to get them to work, and no amount of yelling at the computer will make it work.

It's just nicer for everyone involved if I don't need to be bothered with all this technical stuff.

We had a great Halloween. When we got up Halloween morning, we carved our pumpkins. This was Max's first year to really get into this pumpkin carving thing.

I cut open his pumpkin and he got to scoop the guts out himself, then he drew the face on his pumpkin, and I helped him cut out the pieces. He decided to make his a surprised face.

I got this brilliant idea that this would be the year that I actually roasted the pumpkin seeds. After we were done carving, Max helped me pick out the seeds from the pumpkin guts. After we got all of the seeds out (which took forever) he ended up playing with the pumpkin guts for over an hour.

Sometimes it just doesn't take much to entertain that kid.

Just so you know, I will not be roasting pumpkin seeds again, it was way too much work and as it turns out, nobody in the house will eat them.

A family down the street always hosts a "pre trick or treating" dinner. It's always a great way to start the night. This year we had spaghetti, everyone brings part of the dinner and the kids have a short parade around the block.

CJ didn't go trick or treating this year, he stayed home to hand out candy so me and DH were able to go together to take the other kids out to collect candy.

CJ did a great job with the handing out of the candy. He layered the big bowl of candy with all my favorite candy in the bottom, then the next favorite until my least favorite candy was on top so it was handed out first, so when the night was over, my favorite candy was left!

The kid is a genius. And I'm sure his method had nothing to do with the fact that his favorite candy is the same as mine.

Max was dressed as "SUPER MAX!" and yes, you must yell when you say that. I taught him to show his muscles when he said that and then point to the sky and do a little hop/jump to the side, kind of like he was about to fly away. He practiced this for several days before Halloween, and it really paid off. Whenever someone would ask him who he was, he would immediately drop his candy bucket, show his muscles, yell "SUPER MAX!" and hop/jump away.

He was hilarious.

Until the time that he hopped on the wrong foot, tripped and fell and hurt his knee. He immediately came running over to me to kiss his knee, I guess even superheroes sometimes need their mommies.

We lucked out because the weather wasn't very cold. Even though he protested, I made Max wear his warm pajamas under his super suit. I carried his warm jacket and kept asking him if he wanted to wear it and he just said "No, I'm not really really really cold yet." Apparently, he was only really really cold.

He was really excited about the trick or treating until we nearly got to the end of the block when Max announced that he wanted to go home because he had enough candy. The real reason was that his bucket was too heavy to carry. I offered to carry the candy for him, then he was fine.

Really, I feel that I earned the stuff that I got from the Candy Tax.

I couldn't believe how many people came to trick or treat in our neighborhood that don't live here. There were many carloads of people bringing their kids to get candy, and in a way, I don't blame them, some of our neighbors really get into Halloween and many of them give out really good candy. I didn't recognize probably 90% of the people roaming our neighborhood on Halloween night.

However, they didn't get the good stuff from our house, it was all in the bottom of the candy bowl.

So far, the kids have all paid their "candy tax" to me. I caught Brielle trading Max a tootsie roll for a Hershey bar, and all of her tootsie pops for all of his Twix. Someday he will catch on to this.

I've been making a list of things I need to do tomorrow. For some reason, when I have a ton of work to do and have been concentrating on finishing the work for my business, things around the house seem to fall apart, and I now have a bunch of stuff to clean up. I have several loads of laundry and dishes just waiting for my attention, and that is in addition to the Halloween costume making mess that is still overtaking several rooms in our house. I did get the pumpkin carving mess cleaned up, so I should get some sort of credit for that.

My big goal for the week is to get the refrigerator cleaned out.

I will not be posting pictures.