Halloween 2013

And now for the unveiling of Halloween 2013-- Greek Gods and Goddesses.
 Here's who we all are--
Abe-- Zeus (God of the sky), Betsy--Hera (Goddess of marriage), Clark--Poseidon (God of the sea), Bethany-- Aphrodite (Goddess of love and beauty), Elinor-- Athena (Goddess of wisdom), Faith-- Artemis (Goddess of the hunt), Cannon-- Hermes (God of travel and communication), and George-- Ares (God of war).

I was feeling a little bummed that we didn't really have any events to wear our costumes to as a family this Halloween season, so we decided to host our own Halloween gathering for homeschooling friends today.

That, and Faith got sick last week before a Halloween activity at church and we felt sorry for her and told her we'd host our own party.  Here she is the night of the missed activity-- looking a little green.

Clark and his friend, London the Minecraft Creeper.

Some of the ladies.

 

We are missing one of the moms in this picture-- she was taking care of a little one.

We went on a parade to the park.

 Is it a real parade if there's no one to cheer for you?

I can't remember the last time we had such beautiful mild weather for Halloween.  I'll take it!

We played musical chairs-- first with the little kids.

As we proved today, you're never too old to enjoy musical chairs.  And as you get older, the less rules and more violence, the better.  

The music for the Mom's Round was Thriller.  I was dancing.

Gabrielle was victorious, as was her daughter in her round, and her niece in her round, and her nephew in his round.  There is a very strong musical chairs gene in that family.

The men's only round was very competitive. 

It turned into more of a wrestling match, but it was very entertaining to watch.

In the girl's only round it came down to Athena and Aphrodite.

They were both in it to win it.

It was close..

...but not that close!  Athena was the clear winner!

As far as I'm concerned, this was the scariest sight I've seen this Halloween-- Clark"s friend London turned 16 and has hot new wheels!  My son in a car with a friend driving.  Eeek!  Time is passing quickly.
I guess the teenage boys hanging out in the front yard looked like trouble because two cop cars came to our house to question why they weren't in school.  He further questioned them when they replied that they were homeschooled and having a Halloween party, "So if I called Riverton High School they wouldn't know about you?"  Abe went out and assured them that all was well.
We all got quite a kick out of it and wonder which of our conscientious neighbors we have to thank for the visit from the police.  We homeschooling mothers were bummed we missed out on a learning opportunity for our younger kids to meet and talk to a real policeman! 

Fun to share Halloween with good friends.

And once again, thanks to Andrea for the huge help with the costumes.  The good news is, we have our costumes all figured out for next year-- we'll be an angel choir!

Awaiting the Great Pumpkin

Everyone at our house is anxiously awaiting the glorious day and evening of Halloween, but in the meantime we're enjoying Halloween traditions.

 Abe and Clark really take the lead on carving pumpkins, which I love.  Elinor and Faith were very helpful as well.  Bethany was not so helpful, as she will not gut pumpkins-- she is my daughter.

But she did come up with this great idea that her dad was nice enough to create for her.

Cannon and George were of no use in carving pumpkins, but were of great use in entertaining the family. 

Cannon has some serious dance moves!  As we listened to fun Halloween music Cannon declared, "I have the perfect moves for every song!"

I concur.

I contributed to the evening by baking loads of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.  I just can't get enough of them.

Clark made the jack-o-lantern in a jack-o-lantern.

I'm sure we're not eligible to win because Abe works for Winder, but we entered our picture with our Winder cooler in the Halloween picture contest anyway.

Elinor had Halloween on the mind during dinner this week.  Do you like her peas and carrots pumpkin?

Faith was a cutie-little lion at a zoo birthday party for a friend on Saturday.

 

I liked that we could make her a mane with her own hair.   The nose was a little tight, so it came off  very quickly.

Elinor's children's choir went "pumpkin caroling" today.  They went around a neighborhood doing the equivalent of Christmas caroling, but with pumpkin-y words replacing Christmas words.
I'll be honest, it was interesting.
I think I'll like their actual Christmas concert much better.

But the boys were happy to get a doughnut out of it.  Don't you think it's sad that Cannon has such a hard time expressing himself?

We're working on helping him to come out of his shell.

Abe and I had a fun event Saturday night-- a Hawaiian murder mystery party.  It was fun, but I was quite nervous before hand because it was with quite a small group, including the President, the CEO and the VP of Sales at Winder Farms.  It was a bit of a precursor to the Hawaiian trip in January.   Having never met them before I was worried that my first introduction would be at an event I was very likely to behave badly at.  I tend to get very obnoxious in games like this.  I did my best to behave and was very happy to see how genuinely nice and welcoming they were.
Abe turned out to be the murderer and I figured it out!

Hot Mama

The girls took turns styling my hair.  Who says short hair isn't versatile?  And HOT!

I am WORKING that camera!