Super Why Goes Trick-or-Treating

This Halloween wasn't too exciting for us since we were gone for a week before Halloween. It seems that whenever we're on vacation before a holiday, that holiday always seems to become uneventful. It's just that by the time you return, you're tired and you have a million things to catch up on....so the holiday gets lost in the shuffle. Oh well, right? You do what you can.

We did a few fun Halloween crafts before we left for Philadelphia. The kids made mini-marshmallow ghosts and a Halloween "Boo" picture with their handprints as ghosts.

I also got Elina to draw the most adorable Halloween picture. I especially love the skeleton (scelatin) on the bottom of the page. I also love that it's a "punkin."

The biggest hit this Halloween season was a Halloween-themed sensory tub I put together for the kids. It was just black beans, chickpeas, little measuring spoons, little pumpkin buckets, and little Halloween items--skeletons, rats, and spiders. For some reason, the kids could not let one day pass by without touching this sensory tub. They loved pouring the beans into different containers and carrying them around the house (= a big mess). One day after school, Elina even spent almost an hour quietly picking out all the chickpeas! I think it was her chill-out activity after a long day in school. Sure, I find beans in random places and sometimes all over the carpet, but at least they're having fun with it. (I'm just lucky that Evie isn't crawling around yet because if she were at that stage, I'd have to nix the beans...or at least be more careful with them.)

We also tried to make these pumpkin lollipops that turned out horribly. The only up side is that I now have plenty of Double Stuff Oreos in my possession...which I secretly love, but never allow myself to purchase! I mean, they didn't come out THAT badly, but the thing is I think my lollipop sticks were too thick because our oreos kept breaking. So in the end we just decided to make pumpkin cookies instead of lollipop cookies. (Not like the kids cared because they got to consume Oreos with icing on them!)
We carved our jack-o-lantern (on the day of Halloween) and painted a pumpkin (2 days after Halloween)...although we did these things late, the kids didn't seem to mind at all....and that's the most important part, after all.
Check out the difference in painting techniques between the 2 kids when they paint...I love it!

Elina also had her annual Halloween parade at school. I love this day at school because it's mad chaos...long lines of kids parading in their costumes...parents following the kids around with their cameras and video cameras...it's just hilarious! The kids are celebrities and we, the parents, are the papparazi. It's great! Elina's teachers dressed up as artists that the kids have studied in the past few months. Mrs. V was Frieda Kahlo (it totally looked authentic!) and Ms. K was Jackson Pollack. Cute!

Our Halloween dinner was just for the kids. I was working on finding parts to my costume and B was busy fixing up his costume. Luckily, we had J around to put together some sort of cute Halloween themed table and dinner. I just bought a bunch of holiday shaped pasta from Elina's school, so the kids had Halloween pasta.
This year we tried to be Super Why characters for Halloween. Eli was Super Why and Elina was Princess Presto. I was going to make Evie Wonder Red, but she had bad naps that day, so she was just plain crabby. I attempted to tie a red bandana around her neck to look like a cape, but that just made her angry later on....so that came right off. So in our minds she was Wonder Red. I was Alpha Pig...kind of, sort of an Alpha Pig. I borrowed J's purple v-neck and purple capri pants (which I folded up so they looked like shorts). Then I put on B's tool belt, added some of the kids' play tools, and stuck an orange triangle on the front of the tool belt. I didn't have a hard hat, but B had some really old lab goggles laying around that I put on. I've always hated lab goggles because of my chubby cheeks. The goggles do not sit attractively on chubby cheeks. It makes my cheeks look bigger and it makes it nearly impossible for me to smile big. So that was my sad costume. Luckily, I made myself a yellow cape before I left for Philly, so I had that on as well. But overall, J said I looked really weird. I think so, too.

There wasn't anyone left for B to be (he did not want to be Alpha Pig from the start), so he chose to be Whyatt's PDA/phone thing. We figured that would be easy to make since we'd just have to put him into a box, paint the box red, and decorate the front of it. The thing is, in true B fashion (plus, the fact that we had been in Philly and then he went straight to California for a conference right after that), he decided to work on his costume 90 minutes before we were going to go trick-or-treating. 90 minutes is definitely not enough time to spray paint a box and have it dry. Therefore, B ended up walking around the neighborhood, inhaling toxic fumes while our children went door-to-door for candy. Don't get me wrong, the PDA looked really cool...but the fumes did not smell cool at all.

Seriously, unless you know the show, no one knew who the heck B and I were. The kids were cute because their costumes were more authentic...not some hodgepodge costume like their mom's. But it was a fun night and the kids really enjoyed themselves. After every house, Eli would shout, "Look at mine!" He and Elina had been practicing the do's and don'ts of trick-or-treating all week, so Eli was more than ready to get his. This year we finished a lot faster since Eli is a good walker. We got lots of candy and then called it a night. Even though we were a little tired from Philly, it was still a fun-filled Halloween.


Happy Halloween!