Happy Halloween 2011!

For the record, I do NOT like having Halloween fall on a school night. Ugh. But we'll have to deal with it for the next 4 years until it's back on the weekend again I suppose!

The boys have karate on Monday afternoons right after school, so when they got home from karate, they were BESIDE themselves with anticipation to go trick or treating. I decided to buy myself some time by taking them all trick or treating at Publix first! :) LOVE that place. They have stations set up all over the store with games and candy for kids from 4-7 pm. It was perfect!

Here's the only picture of the 4 of them in costume. I thought Caleb was going to be Buzz Lightyear...but when I went to the closet to get the costume, I realized I sold it at a consignment sale a while ago. Ooops. So I pulled out the lion costume from the attic...which freaked Caleb out. He is NOT a fan of costumed characters, mascots, etc. Poor guy. Jacob was a ninja - got it for two dollars or something crazy last year AFTER halloween. Josiah was Mario....a friend at church said to me one day "hey - your boys like video games. Either want to be Mario? We have the costume from last year". Love that. Callie was Tinkerbell - she chose a dress up costume from her closet of many options. Changed her mind a hundred times leading up to halloween but settled on tinkerbell.

my kids seriously love these little carnival types of games. LOVE them.

Still not super happy about the costume thing, but the candy thing perked him up!

We got home, forced the kids to all eat one chicken tender (while David & I greatly enjoyed the subs we got while at Publix - they are the BEST!), and then gave in and let them get started. Caleb REFUSED to put his costume back on and said he wanted to stay home and play ball with David (he was the candy hander-outer. Okay with me! Callie didn't want to wear the wings that came with hers. Fine with me. This is why I don't ever spend money on costumes. Half the time they change their mind or don't want to wear half of it. Not worth the stress!!

Off we went! I'm a pretty smart mom. I had a couple of plastic Publix bags and water bottle. Learned from experience. We get very thirsty. And their buckets get very heavy from the candy but they don't want to quit. So I take the plastic bags to dump their buckets every now and then so they don't get too heavy. Smart, right? :)

We did the back half of the neigbhorhood and then brought Callie home. She wanted to go back out, but agreed to stay with David when I told her she could eat some candy. She discovered that she LOVES handing OUT the candy and I had to pry her off of the steps later that night when it was over. She may never trick or treat again - she may be our candy hander-outer forever more! :)