Happy Halloween

How we manage to always land the Pumpkin Patch Preschool Field Trip and the Preschool Halloween Party, I just don't know!  But maybe the fact that I beg the other mothers for it has something to do with it!  For the past eight years we have been in charge of both, and I'm sure we will secure the nomination for Mason's Preschool next year too.  Then after that I'm not sure what we'll do.  We'd be lost without doing a Halloween party, so we might just have to change our time and venue and make it a full family event from that point on.  For now, however, we'll stick to doing preschool parties and consider ourselves the luckiest little spooks around!

 

We began the preschool day with arts and crafts.

 

 

Then we sang songs, the kids did a show, and we decorated cookies and pigged out on the usual treats--carameled apples, caramel pretzels rolled in M&M's, puppy chow, etc.  Unfortunately, missing from our celebration this year was the annual witches brew.  As it would turn out, no place in Bismarck carries dry ice.  You have to drive it in from Fargo, and the hours of the company didn't work out with our schedule the week of the party.  It was a devastating blow to the kids, but next year we will sort it out if I have to overnight it!

 

The kids loved the party, and it kicked off all of our Halloween fun. 

Over the next few nights we carved our pumpkins, made pumpkin bread, and toasted pumpkin seeds. 

Then, on Halloween Day, I volunteered at Madison's school Halloween party,

 

and after school we began the traditional Halloween dinner preparations.  First, the kids painted one of their most fleshy little pumpkins.  Then we prepared our pumpkin stroganoff which was carefully deposited within our painted pumpkin.  Finally, we stuck the pumpkin in the oven to roast.  By dinner time we were ready for our Halloween pumpkin feast, followed by the annual Halloween photo shoot.  This year, we went with a Lord of the Rings theme. (It was supposed to be Harry Potter after all of our Harry Potter adventures--but since we have stopped reading with the move and the start of school, and somehow gotten onto a Lord of the Rings stint, the kids talked me into getting them new Lord of the Rings stuff.  Watch for a Harry Potter theme next year though--and maybe even I'll have a robe by then!)  As you can see, we have Aragorn, Frodo Baggins, and two Arwens.

They were pretty fierce some looking,

and enjoyed both the ward trunk or treat and trick or treating with some friends.

 

Then we all went to the Nelson's house for hot chocolate and playtime and didn't stroll into home til just after midnight.  It was a bit rough for Madison to be up for school the next day, but oh well, such is life.