Halloween 2015, When Many Things Happened

*WARNING: Lots of spooky, scary pictures in the following blog post*

Halloween is a fun but totally exhausting holiday. It is a great holiday if you are into cheap thrills, jump scares, the supernatural, and playing make-believe. It's also fun to help your kids pick out and design their costumes, go trick-or-treating, and (of course) eat lots of yummy candy. However, Halloween has seemed to balloon in both importance and in retail dominance with every passing year. I can't go through any store (starting in September!) without being bombarded by some Halloween product or another. And when you have multiple kids, and they each have a Halloween party (or two, or three) to attend, it all gets to be a bit much.

We started celebrating Halloween approximately a week early, when we took a family trip to the Reid Park Zoo. Sadly, this was to be our last trip as members of the zoo; we've been members for nine years! However, with all our kids in school, and with busier lives, we decided that we didn't need a regular membership any more; an occasional trip (once a year or so) will have to satisfy us from now on.

 

However, this zoo trip also featured lots of Halloween decorations. The zoo throws a large evening Halloween party every year, and we happened to show up on the morning before the big night, so all the decorations were up everywhere...and we didn't have to pay extra to see any of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Halloween decorations ended up fascinating my children even more than the animals during this trip...

 

 

...except for feeding the giraffes! This is always one of their favorite things to do.

The kids were also lucky enough to ride on the zoo's brand-new carousel as part of our trip. The carousel had just opened the week before, so they were glad we were able to "sneak it in" on our last member visit to the zoo.

Of course, there were skeletons riding the carousel along with my children; gotta keep that Halloween motif going.

The rest of that week was filled up with the other usual Halloween miscellany. I had to put finishing touches on Lorelai's costume...

This year, my beautiful kind oldest child wanted to be an axe murderer. I never thought I'd have to try and simulate a realistic blood-spatter pattern for a Halloween costume; you learn something new every day, I guess.

For the last two years, the girls' Halloween costumes have ended up costing us a pretty penny. Two years ago, I bought two of the three costumes from the store. Last year, I thought I would "save money" by making the girls' costumes myself. And then they all decided to go as Ninja Turtles characters, and it resulted in several trips to clothing and craft stores, plus lots of time putting it all together. Ugh. This year, I vowed we'd have a "thrift-store"-style Halloween; I told the girls it was up to them to choose their costumes, based on the parts we had laying around the house. I'd be willing to buy makeup and a few cheap accessories, but that was it!

Here's what they came up with: Lorelai the axe murderer...

Celeste the pirate (yay! Now all three of my girls have been pirates)...

Aurora the fairy queen (not princess, as she constantly reminded me)...

Overall, I thought the outfits all worked out pretty well. Best yet, they were all pretty comfortable, and the girls had no problem wearing them frequently throughout the week.

They first tested their costumes out at our LDS ward's trunk or treat, which was way too overcrowded (we combined the activity with another ward; there were hundreds of people roaming around. It was pretty awful). After the trunk or treat (and hopped up on sugar), we returned home to carve our pumpkins.

 

 

This year, the girls helped out more than they had at any previous year. It was nice to see them getting into the action (and it was nice to not have to do it all myself...Nathan is a Halloween grinch and hates carving pumpkins).

Then came Friday, October 30th, the day of our school's Halloween parade. Everybody had a great time showing off their costumes and goofing off with friends.

 

 

 

The parade ended with all the elementary school kids gathering together on the field to entertain the parents with a flash mob set to Michael Jackson's "Thriller." It was so cute to see everyone strutting their zombie stuff out there in the chilly air. (For the record, this was the coldest Halloween I've yet experienced in Arizona; it rained that Friday, and it was cool and breezy all weekend.)

Aurora also had a Halloween class party that day, complete with a ton of sweet treats.

 

 

The fun continued at our house right after school; since I apparently can't help myself, I threw a Halloween "luncheon" (I was too cowardly to call it a "party," since I hadn't planned any games). I whipped up some bread sticks with dipping sauce, "witches' brooms" (really string cheese attached to a pretzel), and some bubbling "witches' brew" punch, thanks to a little dry ice:

It was a pretty free-form get together; families showed up, kids played around together or watched a movie, adults visited with one another, and ultimately everyone went home.

When everyone finally left, I was exhausted but not overwhelmed. The clean-up didn't even take that long! I don't think I will do another Halloween get together next year; but having the holiday on a weekend seems to bring out the hostess in me, since I did a similar party last year.

However, there was another party that night...a Halloween party for adults only! Nathan and I hadn't been to one of these for quite some time. Several years ago, a family in our ward held huge, elaborate adult Halloween parties...but those parties were very crowded, had loud music, and involved party games that included public humiliation. If you know my husband, you'll know he is not too into those kinds of parties, so he wasn't too keen on going to any more Halloween parties ever again.

But this Halloween party was being thrown by close friends of ours, who are also a little more introverted than the previous hosts. They promised us all we had to do was come, bring a treat, and visit with friends. We thought that sounded safe enough...but what could we wear? Or specifically, what could I get Nathan to wear?

In then end, we decided to dress up as characters from one of our favorite shows: Parks And Recreation, a comedy about employees of a quirky Midwestern town's parks and recreation department. The show finished up its seven-season run last spring, but I thought (with Election Day nearing) it would still be a reasonably timely costume choice.

 

 

I ended up dressing up as Leslie Knope, the over-achieving, excessively perky parks employee who would eventually run for higher public office.

I even made myself a bunch of campaign signs, and ordered some "Knope 2016" pins from Etsy to wear too (in the show, it was hinted that Leslie eventually ran for some national-level position. Congressman? President? Who knows?).

Nathan went as Ron Swanson, Leslie's uber-libertarian, taciturn, forever mustachioed co-worker and friend. It was one of the easiest costumes he's ever had to do. All he had to do was grow a mustache, carry a mug around, and wear my campaign pin. Occasionally, he would spout Ron Swanson "words of wisdom" (most of which involve manly pursuits like steak, hunting, and woodwork). It was the perfect costume for him.

We had a lot of fun at the party; our friends had decorated their whole house to look like Hogwarts a few weeks previously, because their oldest daughter had held a Harry Potter-themed birthday. They had put so much work into their costumes and decorations that they decided to leave it all up and invite all the adults over to show it off a second time!

Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of the party; the lighting was too dark for my dying camera. But we did bring along treats that were "in character" for our costumes. Leslie Knope loves waffles more than any food in the world, so I trussed up a bunch of Eggo mini-waffles for a snack!

We also brought lots of bacon, Ron Swanson's favorite food. Our hosts had provided a chocolate fountain for the party, and most of the bacon ended up dipped in chocolate. Yuck! I preferred it in its unadulterated greasy glory. But I suppose many of the men at the party just couldn't resist.

 

We were totally pooped after the party that night. But our Halloween celebrating wasn't over yet! The following morning was the White Elephant Parade, a long-running tradition in our community. The parade is hosted by the local White Elephant thrift store, and over one hundred local organizations and schools take part in it. Normally, the parade falls on one of the last Saturdays in October; since Halloween was the last Saturday in October this year, the whole parade was very Halloween-themed.

 

 

We'd gone to watch the White Elephant Parade last year (and mostly enjoyed it), but this year for the first time, one of our family members was participating! Now that Lorelai is a member of her school's advanced jazz band, she was to be included in the parade. The advanced band rides on a large moving platform and plays as they go. The band kids all had lots of fun dressing up as "zombies," decorating their float, and playing "Thriller" and "Ghostbusters" for the cheering crowds. I was very proud of her and happy for her effort!

After that, all that remained in our Halloween was the "main event": trick or treating! We warmed up for it by watching The Nightmare Before Christmas (one of our holiday favorites), and after a restful afternoon, we put on our shoes and headed out.

 

 Perhaps due to the parade earlier in the day (and perhaps because our neighborhood was more abandoned than usual this year), the kids got tired of trick or treating a little earlier than they did the year before. That meant it was time to drop Aurora off at home and take the older kids around to the "spooked-out" houses throughout the community.

This year, we picked up a friend of Celeste's, along with the foreign-exchange student currently living at her house, to join us. The student, named Julia, was from Taiwan, and as such was fascinated by Halloween, since it is barely celebrated in her country. She had so much fun going from house to house, checking out each new horrific detail, and laughing with delight at each scary costume and flashing decoration. We went to a handful of "haunted" houses, some of which were quite professional looking (and more than a little scary to a wimp like me; one of them even had a chainsaw-wielding maniac running through it!). The kids often ran from these houses screaming (or in one case, crying), but they always wanted to go back for more. My kids are definitely fearless, and have a taste for the macabre.

After a long night filled with spooks, scares, and candy, we came home. Nathan and I tossed the kids into bed and crashed on the couch, eating a lot of candy and watching Zombieland (our current Halloween movie of choice). The very next morning (early Sunday!), I staggered out of bed, pulled out my storage bins from the garage, and took down all the Halloween decorations! The kids even came out to help me; they even threw away their jack o'lanterns without a second thought. I guess we were all ready for Halloween to be over this year. It was fun, but bring on Thanksgiving and Christmas!