DECORATIONS
Most of our Halloween decorations are in storage in Canada. I did find this Boo! sign here to hang on our front door. I brought our Scream Pumpkin, because I wanted at least one decoration for each holiday to have here. I also bought the mini-pumpkins here. It's been too long since we've carved pumpkins, but at least we have some real ones this year. Ever since school started the kids kept asking me when Christmas was going to be here. I made a HUGE paper chain to count down the days for them, and we scalloped it like curtains across our kitchen window. Today we took down the last link from the orange & black section. Tomorrow we'll start the yellow & brown to count down to Thanksgiving, and then we'll finally be in the red & green section for our Christmas count down. I love Christmas time, but I don't want life to fly by too fast!
Kaleb the pirate-argh, matey!
Noe the prima ballerina-so graceful!
Gavin the jack-o-lantern, the cutest pumpkin in the patch!
Leonard as Elvis, thank you very much!
Jennifer as Marilyn, blondes do have more fun!
COSTUMES
We all had so much fun playing dress-up this year. The only sad thing was that Gavin was terrorized by his mommy & daddy in wigs. I'll have to keep that in mind if I ever want to do anything drastic at the hair salon (which I have been known to do before).
CANDY
Kaleb and Noe filled their pumpkin pails to the brim with candy from our Trunk-or-Treat party. I took them around the parking lot once while Len passed out candy from our van. We switched and Len took them around a second time while I passed out the candy. All the kids in our ward were definitely spoiled. I realized our kids have never gone door-to-door trick-or-treating. For Kaleb & Noe's first Halloween we just dressed them up in cute pumpkin pajamas and took their pictures with our real pumpkins. The next year they were a bumble bee & lady bug and they trick-or-treated at the mall. The year after that, Halloween was on a Sunday, so our ward threw a party where they trick-or-treated from the classrooms. They dressed up as a knight on his horse & a princess on her unicorn. Those 3 Halloween's were all in Ottawa. The past 3 Halloween's we've been in Taipei and have always trick-or-treated at our ward trunk-or-treat parties. As a costume re-cap, they were a vampire & witch; a knight & princess (again, but different costumes); and this year a pirate & ballerina. This was also Gavin's first Halloween. He was adorable as a jack-o-lantern, but he actually just slept in his carseat during the trunk-or-treat. He did get some treats of his own at his Kindermusik class though. Next year he'll be all ready for the real stuff!
ZOMBIE COOKIES
I prepared 6 dozen zombie cookies this year. I started the cookie tradition last year, and this year it grew! I decorated a dozen for our family, 3 dozen for Mrs. Winter's class party, and got 2 dozen ready for the kids in Ms. Yamazaki's class to decorate themselves. I have 101 fun cookie cutter shapes, but my recipe always sticks to them. I've just been making circle cookies and then decorating them creatively (thanks Heather for the link to Elsie's inspiration). As I said before I "prepared" the cookies. I actually ordered the plain cookies from the school's catering services this year. Last year I made them all from scratch, but this year I was overwhelmed with 6 dozen!
PARTIES
We got to celebrate Halloween 5 times this year! We had parties at our Ward Trunk-or-Treat, our Kindermusik class, Mrs. Winter's class, Ms. Yamazaki's class, and the TAS Costume Parade. These 3 pictures are just my favorites!
TV SPECIALS
On actual Halloween day, after school the kids watched the classics- Claymation, Garfield, and Charlie Brown. Later in the evening, we watched The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as a family- complete with popcorn. Even in Taiwan we can keep some of our traditions!
