Happy Halloween from the Beans!
We had such a great week! It was spent sewing, preparing spook alleys, and eating lots of candy and treats!
Growing up our family always carved pumpkins for Family Home Evening the Monday before Halloween. We have been keeping to the tradition! But the last few years we have invited friends to join us - since we don't live close to home to do it with family. Here are our pumpkins! Logan's is the second from the left... he is always so creative and good at carving! Elsy's is the second from the right - she colored hers. And the itty baby one is the one Tommy chewed on to keep busy while we all carved!
This year the pumpkin Logan picked weighed in at 27 lbs! It looked a lot more like grated cheese on the inside than regular pumpkin guts.
The kids seemed to really enjoy it. Elsy put on her apron and helped me pick out the pumpkin seeds so we could roast them later. (She often will not take off her pink princess dress :)
I made a chocolate chip pumpkin roll last year for the get together. It was so tasty I decided to make it every year! Haha... it is easier than it looks and tastes rather fiiiiine.
My main project for the week was sewing Elsy's Ariel costume (and coming up with something for Tom and I!) Elsy always loves to help out so I will let her sit on my lap and help as long as she doesn't push the buttons and mess with the tension wheel... which she always ends up doing. Buttons are so tempting!
Sadly, about halfway through making the costume my sewing machine gave out on me. I think it was a combination of using the wrong needle and the wrong tension for my weird fabric choices that ended up causing all types of birds nests and what-nots. And my attempts at fixing the machine might have made the issues permanent. Yikes! Don't you love it when your attempts at fixing things make them worse? So right now my Singer is hibernation for a while. In the meantime I got out my trusty needle and sewed the rest of the skirt and top by hand. I finally just put my frustrations aside and stayed up late sewing while watching a baking show. It ended up being rather fun.
Here is the finished product! The sleeves were a little big and kept falling off her shoulders. We put a long sleeve purple shirt underneath though and it was allllll good.
For Tom and my costume I decided I wanted to wear him in the front pack to make things easier. So I looked around on Pinterest and found this cute idea of how to decorate around the front pack. Tom was a little popcorn bag and I was a concession lady. Luckily this costume just needed a lot of hot gluing instead of sewing. Although I did hand sew on all those kernels of corn...
Elsy was absolutely darling! Do you see any similarities? Haha Elsy is such a cheese ball. She wanted her hair sprayed red to match Ariel (she brought me her Ariel princess toy and said she wanted to match). We had some major tears while trying to wash it out in the shower but she still wanted red hair again for the second party we went to later.
So on Wednesday it was the ward Trunk or Treat. Here we are! I had wanted to do a family costume but Logan had spent a long time making this costume for the spook alley he was in charge of. So he wore that and we just became whatever we wanted. Logan said we were "A Night at the Movies" where he was the adult action film, Elsy was the kids film, and Tom and I were the concession stand.
The popcorn smelled pretty good right there under my nose.
After spending the first few days of the week sewing like crazy I was ready for a break. So on Thursday we took a day for some down time. A while back my cousin Alicia posted on Facebook something along the lines of "Today I turned on the music and danced around with my daughter. I didn't get anything done but it didn't matter because we had a blast." (Not an exact quote haha). That post has always stuck with me because I am the type of person who measures my success with how much stuff I get done in a day and I really struggle with slowing down. But on Thursday I did! I played a 2 year old version of Battleship with Elsy. We dressed Elsy in her tutu dress and danced for a reaaaally long time to Disney music. We played catch with Tom on my lap and Elsy throwing to us. Tom kept laughing and laughing. It was just so fun! I don't think I left the house all day (which is something I always try and do) but it didn't bother me for once. While I was laying on the floor arranging battle ships I just felt so content. I thought, "I never want to forget this moment." But then I got sad because I knew I probably would. I have read back through my journals and come across things I have no trace of a memory for but am so glad that I recorded because they are wonderful stories and events from my life. I am glad I have journals and this blog so that I can write things down and they can be remembered.
Later that night, I put the kids to bed alone. Logan was out until midnight most the nights of the week working on a spook alley he was in charge of. After I put Elsy to bed I sat in my own bed and started to read a general conference talk. I just felt so overwhelmingly happy. I saw Elsy wasn't asleep yet on the monitor and I realized that some rules were meant to be broken and I told her to come and visit me because I missed her (there is a mic on the monitor). She came running out and sat and cuddled with me for a while in my bed. We talked a little and giggled a little. I just love her little smile and sparkling eyes. It was a really special moment. And then I told her to go back to bed and as I watched her run back to her room I got a little sad. She is just so big now. And she went off to bed without needing my help. Part of me is proud of her, but the other part wishes she still needed me for everything.
The next day she had her 2 1/2 year check up and got her flu shot. We watched Daniel Tiger Gets a Shot and talked about thinking of happy things so she wouldn't be sad. I wish I had a recording of her face after they gave her the shot. It was so confused and her little voice asked, "Is over?" When we told her yes she was so thrilled that it didn't hurt. I don't even think she felt it!
Elsy is 36.5 inches tall (77th percentile) and weighs 29 pounds and 4 ounces (58th percentile). A big difference from her 99% everything as a baby. We knew she would even out eventually!
Now for Logan's spook alley! A family in our ward, the Heywoods, put on a Halloween barn bash every year complete with a potluck dinner, spook alley, and carnival games for kids. We have gone twice now and it is such a huge and fun event. They go all out.
This year they asked Logan to head off their spook alley. He worked so hard on it and it turned out great. He made heads in jars, masks out of plaster and lighted rope, a Pepper's ghost, did the lighting and sound, and was there to all hours decorating and making the place positively spooky!
This is the power switch he made. The premise of the spook alley was that the people were supposed to get to the end where they would turn the power back on to get rid of the spooks. At the end as they went to flip the switch a Pepper's ghost illusion blocked the way and scared them. Logan had a camera snap pictures of the surprised/scared faces. Our friend Cameron helped out a ton as well and we were really grateful for that.
These are the lighted masks. The spook alley was a hit. The pictures at the end were priceless! We had a friend at church tell us their daughter came and slept with them that night after going through it... so it was successful in the scare category. ;)
The Heywood party was the day before Halloween. On the actual night of Halloween I didn't feel like putting my costume on for a third time so I stuck Tom in his Superman shirt that has a velcro cape on the back and didn't spray Elsy's hair again. We originally had planned to go to a harvest carnival at a pumpkin patch but the weather was relentless in the wetness category. So instead we went to Chick fil A and trick or treated at a couple of friends houses.
PS. Sorry for the late posting. I wrote this all out on Sunday night and then at the very end it somehow got deleted. :( And I just wasn't in the mood to re-write it all again for a few days.
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