Halloween

What a disaster! Holy cow, I was completely unprepared for what this Halloween was going to be like. We decided to do the trunk or treat at Dominick's school. The trunk or treat was from 6-8 and we were instructed to decorate our trunk and bring at least 300 pieces of candy. Of good candy.

So we got signed up. My mom and I spent two hours making Handy Manny tools out of cardboard for the car decorations. Then we went shopping (another story, but I got AMAZING boots!). Then I got the kids costumes together.

I was excited. This was the first year Annabelle would really understand and the first year that Dominick was REALLY excited.

It started off great! Here are a few pictures of the car and Dom and I waiting for Nick and Grandma to get there with Annabelle.

It started off great. But there were so many people there. We brought almost 500 pieces of candy. Again, GOOD candy. We spent like $40 something on just candy.

Then I got frustrated. I knew it was a community event, but I was thinking it would be more of just Dom's school and not every single person in the area. We ran out of candy in the first 45 minutes. And I don't mind giving kids candy. If it were all kids, in costumes, I would have been happy and even gone out to get more candy. But it wasn't. There were MANY "kids" over 18 there. A lot of people brought 2 bags for candy. One for them and one for their "kid in the car". Why was their kid in the car??? There was a couple who were walking around with their infant child, who wasn't dressed up, and they were asking for candy. Really?? Really???? Wait until the next day and buy a whole bag for 50% off.

I was mainly frustrated because I spent all my time and effort and a decent amount of money to make sure that Halloween was great. And instead of getting to enjoy it with my kids and family, I was trying to worm my way through a throng of about 500+ people, make sure I didn't lose my kids, and try and have them enjoy walking to the 25 cars that were there.

It was annoying.

After 6:45, we left. I wasn't going to try and get more candy while my kids waited in the car. So we left and went back to our house and then took the kids to the few houses that were giving out candy in our neighborhood.

Luckily a few houses were left in our neighborhood and Dom and Anna had fun.

I was so frustrated and tired at the end of the night that when we were all tucked in, I realized I didn't take hardly any pictures. I took no pictures of Annabelle in her full costume. I took literally NO pictures of Gretchen on her first Halloween. Bad Mommy...

Here's a picture back at the house of Annabelle eating some candy.

Doesn't she just look like trouble??

I'm going to have to get the kids dressed up again and just take a picture! oh well.

I know next year we'll just stay in our neighborhood. I'd rather do that. I would be less frustrated and I think the kids would have more fun.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Halloween!!

One new post at a time!

So here we go, Halloween!!!

We had a great Halloween weekend!

Starting with Friday:
Dommie and Mommy day.
Dominick's been struggling a bit with me and Nick working so much, me in school, Annabelle not always with Dom at daycare, all kinds of things. So on Friday, I switched the kids and dropped Annabelle off and kept Dommie home. I had intended on going to the Magic House with him, but that couldn't happen (no comment on that) so we laid low. The one big thing we did do was carve our pumpkins!!

We went to the pumpkin patch (on a day Nick had to work...boo) and I forgot my camera (double boo) so I have no pictures of that, and we were planning on going back so I didn't get us a big pumpkin. Well we didn't go back, so on Friday, Dom and I went to Schnucks and got two pumpkins and then went to Target and got some Halloween stuff, including a carving kit. Dom picked out both pictures we carved and he helped with pulling out the goo (something he didn't like very much). Here are our finished products. I'm pretty proud! I think we did great!

How grown up is my baby??

Two ghosts on the left and a kitty bat on the right (and a handsome little man!)

Saturday:
We went to the Ketterer's house for a Fall Festival. There was food, beer, pumpkin painting, cookie decorating, haunted frisbee golf and other fun! Dom got into this costume for a bit but we didn't get Annabelle in hers for that night. I didn't want to risk getting it dirty since we had two more Halloween events to attend that weekend.

Dom did a pretty good job with everything but he's still struggling to listen sometimes. I guess that's just pretty standard for an almost two year old though. We're working on it. ;-)

Here are some pictures from the Fall Festival:

Dom and Celia on the hammock

Annabelle chillin' on a blanket

Our little fireman

Pumpkin painting!

A cute little kitty drinking her milk!

Sunday:
Halloween at Glen Echo Country Club.

I don't know when they started this but we went last year too and it was really fun! They had a lot of stuff like an amazing buffet, pumpkin painting, a haunted blow up house, a haunted hay ride through the golf course and more!

Dom and Celia had a blast. They spent a good 20 minutes just running around in the blow up house playing house. The haunted hayride was fun too. At the halfway point, the tractor stopped and there were 3 witches around a fire handing out bags of candy, so the kids had fun. The funniest part about the hay ride was that any time someone jumped out to scare us and everyone screamed, Dom and Celia didn't get it. They asked why everyone was screaming. We told them that it made the people in the costumes happy. They we asked if they could yell too. From then on, anytime someone jumped out, both kids would say (SAY, not yell) ahhhh. Very bored like. So clearly our kids weren't traumatized from the haunted hay ride!!

One of the best parts about this event was that my Grandma got to come! So Dommie and Annabelle got to see Great-Grandma for Halloween, something we weren't going to be able to do since Halloween was on a Monday this year. So yay for that! :)

Here are a few pics from there (with Annabelle in her costume!):

Dom, Celia and Aunt Angie painting pumpkins (yes, Dom's shirt got ruined during this process, but that's ok!)

Grandpa with his ladybug and kitty cat!

Daddy and his lady bug getting ready to go to the event (how cute is SHE?!?!)

Great Grandma and her sleeping lady bug.

Finally: Monday!
Halloween Night

This year (same as last year, and the year before, and the year before that!) we went to Nick's sister's house to do trick or treating with them. I do this for many reasons. 1) Dom is still too young to really have fun doing this by ourselves. It's more fun for him to do it with his older cousins. 2) He gets to see more family (cousins and his Nani) if we go there and I like to get to see some of my nieces and nephew. 3) Kate's neighborhood is a very private neighborhood so there aren't a lot of cars going through it and I feel like that's a little safer for us to be walking around there. 4) Last but NOT least, their neighbors hand out beer to the adults while trick or treating...who doesn't love that!?

This year, my mom came along. My sister's mother in law's birthday is Halloween so she was with her in-laws and I knew we wouldn't get out to my parent's house on Halloween day so she met us at Kate's house and walked with us. That was especially helpful because Nick (unfortunately) had to work this year during trick or treating and couldn't come. I needed the extra hands to have both kids this year.

So it was a great year. Dom even told his joke once!

Which was: Q) Why don't monsters eat clowns? A) Because they taste funny!
Or as Celia pointed out, an alternate answer could be: Because clowns aren't food!! (which is more true and equally funny when a 3 year old says it!).

Anyway, here are a few pics from Halloween night:

Cousins! (Dominick, Jilly, Sophia with Annabelle, and Henry)

Annabelle and Grandma

Dommie, our little fireman

The grandma's. My mom, Dominick, Jilly and Nick's mom with Annabelle

One more funny story about trick or treating. One man asked Dommie what he was. Dom told him that he was a fire man. The man then asked how many fires he had put out. Dom answered 2 fires! So the man told him that was worth 2 pieces of candy. Then he asked Jilly if she had put out any fires. She said yes. When he asked her how many, she thought about it for a second and then said, very proudly, "THREE fires!". Haha, smart girl. ;-)

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get another post done!