The Witch's Crew

As many of you know, we always do a family costume theme for Halloween.  I always wonder how long we can really keep this up.  Now that the kids are getting older, they have definite ideas about what they want to be for Halloween.  So I have to come up with more creative ways to work us all into one theme.  

This year Elina had to be a mouse.  I mean, you all saw that comin', right?  Luckily, our friends had a full-body mouse costume and were happy to lend it to us.  I was concerned about the full-body outfit because San Antonio is not known for cold, chilly Halloweens.  But once Elina saw the costume, she knew she was destined to be a mouse.  Although she made one minor adjustment...she added a pink tutu.  She said, "That way people know that I'm a girl mouse, not a boy mouse."  She looked really cute and even put her hands (or paws) up in a mouse-y pose for most of her pictures.  Way to get into character!  And lucky for Elina, we just had a cold front, so the weather was just right for a full-body costume!

Eli decided that he wanted to be a bat this year.  I thought for sure he would want to be a dinosaur!  But he saw the Halloween episode of Little Einsteins and Quincy was a bat, so he wanted to be just like Quincy.  At least this costume was easy to put together.  I got Eli all black clothes, ordered bat wings online, and I made him a bat face using a baseball cap.  I was thinking about buying him one of those headbands that have the bat ears on top, but B nixed that idea...the thought of Eli wearing a headband didn't sit well with him.  Luckily, I found this site and then I got to work.  It actually came out quite cute!

So, I kept thinking and thinking about how I could get me, B and Evie in on this bat-mouse deal, but I was coming up with nothing.  Until one week before Halloween, LW lends me a bunch of costumes for Evie and one of them was a witch costume.  LW said, "You guys could all be things that would go into a witch's cauldron."  What a great idea!  Evie became our little, adorable witch (great costume, LW)...

...so I was the black cat and B was the spider.  Unfortunately, I ran out of time to make a spider costume for B, so I just put spider web stuff on a black t-shirt and glued spiders all over the web.  Luckily, B is an easygoing guy and didn't care much.  The sad thing was that every time he picked up Evie, the web would get shifted around and start falling apart.  Oh well.  

Every year Elina and Eli's school has a Halloween parade so that the kids can walk around the school to show off their costumes.  After the parade the kids get to trick-or-treat around the school, too.  It's definitely a lot of fun!  Eli's parade was the Thursday before Halloween and Elina's was on Halloween day.  They were so cute!

On Halloween morning, as Eli got out of bed, he said, "But, Mommy, I don't see ghostes [ghosts] outside."  Isn't that cute?  He thought ghosts were going to start showing up on Halloween!  Actually, maybe it's not so cute....it's kinda scary.

I made Halloween pancakes for breakfast.  (Just pancakes with spider webs and pumpkin faces drawn on with gel icing.)  And after school we made witch hats with sugar cones.  The kids loved painting the icing onto the hats and putting on a ton of sprinkles.  Eli got original and started eating his hat from the tip.  Then Elina followed suit.

This year we decided to go trick-or-treating in our future neighborhood rather than our current one.  We've become friends with our future next-door neighbors and our kids and their kids (EC and JC) play well together, so we thought it'd be fun for all of us to go together.  We went to their house to eat dinner and I made spaghetti with eyeballs [meatballs] for the kids.  Then we headed out for candy around 7pm, which is way later than we have ever gone before.  I didn't realize this until I started taking pictures.  It is really dark at 7pm!  And it is really difficult to take pictures in the dark!!  So I didn't get as many pics this year...but honestly, in the long run, that's a good thing.  Here are the kids, ready to go!

The kids had so much fun trick-or-treating in the dark.

After every house, Eli would run and show us the contents of his bag.  Elina kept saying she had "10 million candies."  She also said, "Mommy, I'm really looking forward to eating Skittles and Twix."  Ha!

Evie was the cutest though.  She picked up the whole trick-or-treating thing right away.  She didn't even know what she was getting, but if all the other kids wanted some, she knew she wanted some too.  And she knew that if she walked up to the door and held out her bag, people would throw something in there.  It was adorable.

She was so funny because we went trick-or-treating with EC, JC, their dad, and their grandparents.  Evie's never even met the grandparents before, but when the grandfather went up to Evie to pick her up to take her to get candy, she thought about it for one millisecond and jumped right into his arms. She definitely has stranger anxiety, but I guess when candy's involved, she doesn't have any reservations!

After an hour or so, the kids were ready to head back to the house.  They complained that their bags were too heavy!  I weighed the candy and we ended up with 5 pounds of candy total.  That's a lot of candy!

We got home a little after 9pm and put the kids straight to bed.  Everyone went to bed late...and of course, everyone woke up extra early this morning, too.  Doesn't it always work out that way?

What a great night!  The kids were in heaven.  Today Eli said, "Mommy, I want to go trick-or-treating again today."  364 days left, Eli.  You just wait.

Happy Halloween!!