Halloween 2011

Cillian's 1st Halloween, too. :)

Halloween was colder this year, and by the time October 31 actually arrived, we were kind of burned out from trick-or-treating. Sad, isn't it?
It was our FOURTH Halloween event.
We had trick-or-treated at an outdoor mall, in the downtown of the city where the school is, and at our parish event. By Monday night, the boys were just drained and the excitement wore off.
Now I know: next year, we skip some of the business events! (gladly)

Halloween was still fun, of course. We did our Mummy Dogs for dinner, hit the good houses, and watched some of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown once back home.
See for yourself how adorable my boys were (no bias, of course;):

My little pumpkin on his 1st Halloween

 Brennan as "Luigi"

 My 3 boys

 one of my favorites

 Aidan as "Mario"

 Pat & his boys

 Me with my Little Men

 Our jack-o-lantern. Aidan drew it on this year!

I hope you had a wonderful Halloween!

Trick-or-Treat! (3 times over;)

Halloween isn't just one day any more.
Towns, shopping centers...they host their own trick-or-treating events and Halloween feels like a week-long gig. With my kids being young, though, I don't mind. They don't last too long, and we sure get our money's worth out of each costume!
Here is a recap of our Halloween "week":

Brennan as Batman for trick-or-treating w/ Aidan's school friends last Monday

Brennan & Aidan with school friends

Batman (cape-less by this point) and a Ninja

Friday: Preschool trick-or-treat in our town, just me & Brennan. (I loved this. He had so much fun. At one point, he looked up at me & said "Mom, I'm so happy!")

Aidan the Ninja (in pose) during his school parade

Carving pumpkins on Saturday 

Brennan with a silly-face pumpkin

My ROBOT! (Halloween)

My Rocket Ship!

My favorite men :)

Hats off to Pat, as it was his idea to make homemade costumes this year, and he did all the work. The boys loved it, and their costumes received MANY compliments. Such a good dad!

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween! 

Now for November celebrations, beginning with All Saints Day! :)

Halloween Menu...Ghostly Goodies :)

Do you have a Halloween tradition when it comes to food (other than stealing your kids' candy;)?

We have fallen into the tradition of making pita pizzas for dinner each Halloween.
I know a lot of people do Chili.

There are a lot of cute ideas out there, and I think we'll take be having some extra fun meals in there as part of celebrating fall.

Some examples:
Mummy Dogs

(we make ours without cheese, and often using turkey dogs)

Boo Brownies (we made these a few years ago for Sunday school)

Apple Bites (1st year doing these)

All fun stuff! I'd love to add some festivity-with-food while my boys are still young enough to not think it's corny. 

I have some good ones for Thanksgiving...but that's for next month. :)

Any fun Halloween food things you do?

We Have Some Real Stars In Our House

It's WOODY and BUZZ LIGHTYEAR!

To INFINITY...AND BEYOND!!!

Despite our recent sickness, Sunday the boys had some fun in their costumes and enjoyed sunshine and getting in some trick-or-treating at a local outdoor mall. (relax. It was before they were really sick, and before we knew what Aidan had).

Since then Brennan has asked to be Buzz Lightyear every single day.  :)
Saturday is trick-or-treating! I am glad our little men are on the mend.
Hopefully it will be a Happy Halloween!

Talk About a Deal!

I recently posted on Twitter that I found some amazing deals. I love finding a good deal. Who doesn't?

My mother-in-law says I make Polock proud. I take that as a compliment! ;)
So here is to making the frugal-minded proud. I sure enjoyed myself.

I hit Target and found Halloween costumes marked down to 90% off (thanks to my friend Amanda for the heads up!). You can't find a better deal! I bought a Ninja costume for Aidan for $1.49. $1.49! I figured if he outgrows it by next year, or really wants to be something else, it will at least be fun for play clothes.

The costume did not come with a sword, so we picked one up from the Dollar Tree. An entire Ninja Costume for $2.49. YES!! (and it's likely he'll be able to wear it next year, as it's a size 6-8). I love this one. I bought Brennan a police costume. So stinking cute. This one was $2.00. Can you believe these deals?! Awesome. He looks so adorable in it, too. See?This one is size 2-4, so hopefully it will fit him next year. (Not pictured: a Buzz Lightyear costume in Brennan's size for next year, just under $2. I would have bought one for Aidan, too, but none were left in his size)We've really enjoyed coordinating their costumes, and so have they. Last year Aidan was a firefighter and Brennan a dalmatian; this year Aidan was Batman and Brennan was Superman.
I was trying to figure out what we could do for next year with these, and my hubs (Pat) had the great idea of Brennan being a cop, and Aidan a jailbird. Wouldn't that be cute? I'm hoping they'll both be willing to go with that next year. ;)Oh, and the above pumpkin buckets were 12 cents each. 12 cents! Brennan loves to just carry them around, so I thought why not. We actually did pretend play trick-or-treat, and the boys were using legos as candy. Very cute. I almost forgot...I also picked up two Halloween placemats for 10 cents each, and one sheet of Halloween window cling stickers for 9 cents. Incredible.

Another great deal I found was actually for me. We were at Michael's and they had their yard Scarecrows for $1.59! These scarecrows are over 4 feet tall! I was so excited. I've wanted one but never felt like spending 1o bucks on it. I love it and would have put it out until Thanksgiving, but our ground is pretty solid already with the temps we've had. Definitely next year!

Those are my awesome deals. There have been others, but I can't mention them because they are Christmas presents for people. ;)
Speaking of, I'm about half-way finished with my shopping, and last night I wrapped the first four presents.
How about you?

Tricks & Treats

(hee-hee...doesn't it look like Aidan was strangling him?)

Our Halloween was full of fun, tricks & treats. :)
Batman started off flying around the yard to warm up, and Superman joined him soon enough.

Together they tackled about 5 blocks, filling their buckets to the rim.
By 7:30 Batman's bucket was heavy, and he was asking to go home and watch Charlie Brown and enjoy that candy.
Ironically enough, Batman rode back in the stroller (announcing it was the Batmobile), and Superman rode in Daddy's arms.

They made out pretty well in the chocolate department ;) (keeping mommy pretty content), and in this mom's not-so-humble-opinion, they made for the two cutest Superhero brothers I've ever seen.

(enjoying some of their treats before bed)

Happy Halloween!!

Halloween tidbits:

Trick or treating was imported from European immigrants who came the US, especially the Irish. When the baby boom of the 1950's occurred, children and popular culture embraced the neighborhood door-to-door tradition we know today.

The custom of 'trick or treat' probably has several origins. Again mostly Irish.An old Irish peasant practice called for going door to door to collect money, bread cake, cheese, eggs, butter, nuts, apples, etc., in preparation for the festival of St. Columbus Kill. Yet another custom was the begging for soul cakes, or offerings for one's self - particularly in exchange for promises of prosperity or protection against bad luck. It is with this custom the concept of the fairies came to be incorporated as people used to go door to door begging for treats. Failure to supply the treats would usually result in practical jokes being visited on the owner of the house.

(a-hem...go Irish)

I know many people that didn't trick-or-treat growing up, and in turn don't take their kids trick-or-treating. We didn't grow up like that. My dad was always a blast around Halloween (still is, I'm just not living near them), and we trick-or-treated every year. We'd finish the night off by sorting through our candy and watching a scary movie.

Which leads me to my next question: what's the scariest movie you can think of (seen)?
For me, it's The Exorcist. The first one. It's based on factual events, too. I think I first saw that movie when I was six years old. Isn't that insane?!

Dumbest scary movie? Well, my brother Kevin and I loved to watch Shocker. "No more Mr, nice Guy, Johnny!". Ahhh. The good ol' days.

If I was dressing up this year, I would have been a Whoopee Cushion. I saw the best costume for that at Wal-Mart. I just couldn't justify spending $40 on it with no big place to wear it. But that would have been fun. I would have walked behind Pat all night and announce he was farting. :-~

I've posted them before, but I just can't resist. Here are our Halloweens, past & present:

Aidan's first Halloween!

Aidan as Superman, 2005, 18 months old

Aidan as a doggy, 2006, 2 1/2 years old
Firefighter Aidan with his dalmatian brother; Brennan's first Halloween, last year
And now this year! This is Aidan as Batman with his cousin. Brennan is Superman, but those pictures will be taken tonight. :)
Happy Halloween! Hope you have a spooktacular day!

Weekend Recap

A busy weekend it was!
The fun started with Aidan & I going to the Friday 2:30 showing of High School Musical 3. We were both excited about our "date", especially since this was Aidan's first time to the theater. He was in awe of just how BIG the theater was, thinking it was cool the seats went up a hill. He snuggled with me most of the movie, and we both really enjoyed HSM3. Have I ever mentioned that Corbin Bleu is hot? ;)

After the movie we headed home where company awaited. Patrick's mom, sister, and her two kids drove down from Michigan to do trick-or-treating with us at an outdoor shopping mall. We've gone the past 2 years, so it's becoming a tradition.
We ate some Mummy Dogs and potato soup while waiting on the rain to let up, and then we started trick-or-treating at the perfect time. It was not that crowded at all (guess the rain scared away some folks), and we were able to hit every store. The kids were all just adorable in their costumes. Batman felt pretty cool hanging out with Cinderella all night. Superman had no clue that he was Superman, nor what he was collecting in his pumpkin bucket. He just wanted to walk as fast as he could, hanging on to his bucket. It was so cute.



Friday night ended after we all exhausted ourselves, and Saturday was set up to be just as exhausting. We headed off to Michigan to go to a 1:00 wedding, 6:00 reception. We definitely wanted to stay for the reception since Aidan loves to get jiggy with it. Luckily Cinderella was there, too. He had a dance partner all night long!The down side was that Brennan was starting to not feel so well. :( He was running a temperature most of the reception. Poor little guy. It was a blessing to win that Cuddling Baby Mei Tai from Andrea's contest, because that was the place he wanted to be, and it was quite comfortable having him there. He slept soundly until we headed home.


Sunday we played it low key since Brennan was on and off with a fever. We took advantage of family time, decorating our pumpkins and Aidan & Patrick carved their Batman pumpkin.
Aidan thought it was pretty gross gutting the pumpkin, but both he & Patrick thought it was well worth it when they saw how cool their Batman pumpkin turned out. I think this is the best carved pumpkin we've had yet! (thanks to you, Pat)
It was a fun, tiring weekend (minus Brennan being sick, of course). I felt so tired today, as did the boys. Next weekend looks to be almost as exhausting. Hopefully we can all get healthy and actually stay healthy this week!

I hope you had a fun weekend, too. Have a good final week of October!