This is Halloween

This whole week hinged around Halloween and Halloween type events. It started off slowly though. Annika stayed home from school on Monday with a nasty cough. Fortunately it was mostly gone by noon. I probably should have sent her, but I didn't want the other parents to lynch me because I had sent a semi sick/coughing child. :) Sadly we also missed gymnastics and a group piano lesson. Happily Annika got to do a make up for her piano lesson on Wednesday and had lots of fun. :)

Tuesday night's sewing - much better! I actually sewed a super fandangeled pocket. Amazing - I know! And I learned how to put in a zipper. Not so fandangled - more mangled. But at least I know how to do if I ever need to. Which I probably wont. :)

Wednesday was a blur of running errands to pick up items for our Thursday and Friday activities. Needless to say Target and Walmart got A LOT of our money this week! We also got our first snow of the year. Mieka went out and ate some snow and then came back in and conked out on the couch.

Yum .. savoring the taste of melting snow. Mieka is quite the connoisseur of snow.

Sleeping with her natural hot water bottle.

Thursday was Annika's Harvest Party and Mieka's Halloween party at school. I bundled Mieka up her in super cute girly shark costume (notice the pink bow!). She was super excited to be able to take candy to class and have a party!

After dropping Mieka off I headed over to Annika's school to help with their harvest party. They don't celebrate Halloween at American Heritage, so we did more of a harvest theme. My portion of the pony show was the craft. We made little gourd/pumpkin people. I was so busy with my part that I didn't notice the other areas. But Annika told me that decorating caramel apples was her favorite part. And I heard lots of kids cheering and laughing while doing the pumpkin bowling game.

Here's our family gourds made from the left-over materials.

Later that evening we decorated our pumpkins. I thought we would try painting them this year. Unfortunately I didn't think about the paint being washable - Dave's pumpkin was washed clean by the rain. Bummer. :( The girls had a good time and because it was paint they were able to "decorate" the pumpkin and themselves many times over. :)

Friday we spent the morning racing to get things ready for our neighborhood kid party. We have A LOT of kids on our street around the same age of Annika and Mieka. We had 26 or 27 little ones show up for the party. It was chaos. Next year I think I will rethink having so many and doing so many different little crafts. Or maybe next year we'll just have more adults there to help and supervise.

We made spiders out of suckers, decorated pumpkins, decorated cookies, made little mummies out of toilet paper tubes and ate donuts off a string. It was a sugar fueled fest - but I think everyone had fun.



The next day was Halloween eve. It was a rainy afternoon and Annika fretted that we wouldn't be able to go to the ward Trunk or Treat or regular trick or treating. She asked me at least 10 times if we were going to go. Ack!

While we waited out the storm Dave put on his "Dave the Builder" hat and hung some shelves and put up some swings down in the play room. Slowly but surely we are getting things pulled together. Maybe some day we'll get everything up on the walls and organized. Probably just before we move. :)

Our new nifty little library in the playroom. Yay!

It really started to pour around 5:30 but we decided we would just wade through anyway. Annika dressed up as a beautiful butterfly, Mieka - a cute little shark, and me - a bee. Dave decided to forgo dressing up this year - and for once I didn't make him. :) On the way to the trunk of treat Mieka declared that she was the kind of shark that ate bugs - not fish. Apparently she had plans for me and Annika later that evening. :)

I think the prayers of many parents and the activity committee were heard that night. We got to the Trunk or Treat shortly after 6:10 and the rain stopped at around 6:20. Amazing! In less than 20 minutes the girls bags were 1/3 full and they were ready to go knock some doors.

We first headed over to Nancy's part of the neighborhood so that the girls could visit her. We got some great hot bread sticks to warm us all up while we were there. Thanks!

And then we went over to Dan and Emilee's part of town to go Trick or Treating.

Mieka was so tired by the end of the night she could only drag her bag of candy behind her. Poor tired shark!

By the time we got home the girls each had literally 2 lbs 14 ounces of candy. I weighed it! :)

We celebrated the actual Halloween on Sunday by having candy pumpkin pancakes - nothing like candy to start your morning off. The breakfast of champions!

After church Grandma and Grandpa Sucher stopped by for a visit. The girls chased Grandpa around the house and blocked the door so that he couldn't leave. I think they like him. :) Later we headed over to Nancy's for dinner. We were treated to some great Korean curry and very interesting chats about computer programming and iphone apps. :)

Over all a super great week! Tomorrow is Election day. Yay! I'm very interested to see how the elections work out.