family Halloween party

The weekend was a blitz, one of those where I tried to fit too much in and we didn't get to it all but had a ton of chaotic fun trying.

On Friday I went out with our fabulous Realtor (and one of the infamous favorite aunties) to look at houses.  Husband was out of town on business but since his schedule is particularly busy this month, I was trying to do some preliminary work.  We had a pretty good idea of what we wanted but needed to clarify some details.  However, in looking at our options, I found that I loved everything and promptly doubled my range of choices, rather than narrowing them down.  But it was a great experience, I learned a lot, fell in love with a few ideas and had lots of research to report back to Husband that night.  

That evening, I arrived home just in time to gather up the girls and meet my mom and another favorite auntie (this one from my side of the family) for a quick dinner. We lounged and laughed and played until the girls went to bed and then we played some more (late night chick flick).

Saturday morning was one of those pretty perfect weekend moments where the girls come rolling in, delighted to discover that Daddy had snuck in during the night.  We have a tasty and leisurely breakfast while we make plans for the day.  Since we had a busy day before us, we immediately set to work.  The girls helped me frost cupcakes for that evening's Halloween party and gathered some party materials.  Then Husband and I went for a drive so I could show him some favorite results from my house hunting research.  It's fun and exciting and a little overwhelming.  No official decisions yet but we might be getting closer.

Time flew and we dashed back to the house, gathered the girls and met up with family for a lunch date party.  Both of my brothers and their families, plus my cousin and his family, plus another cousin, aunt and my mom were there so we made quite the group.  Children outnumbered adults and there was a frenzy of eating, laughing, talking, playing and general mischief.  Eventually we headed back to our house where we spent the afternoon raking leaves, cooking dinner for that evening's Halloween party, coloring pictures and playing with toys.

The evening was fantastic.  Our Halloween feast (mostly Pinterest inspired) was a blast.  We had two kinds of soup accompanied by bones (rolls shaped as such) dripping with blood (strawberry jam), candy corn cups (fruit cups layered with pineapple, mandarin oranges and cool whip), devil's eyes (deviled eggs), graveyard goodies (steamed veggies and crackers artistically arranged and sprinkled with cheese), mummy men (hot dogs wrapped with thin pieces of biscuit dough) and monster cupcakes (cupcakes decorated with candy to be mummies or monsters) for dessert.  It was silly and creative and fun and tasted great.

We kicked off the party with donuts on a string before changing into our costumes.  The kids paraded and danced while I scrambled to finish assembling our official party games.  We started by decorating our monster jugs (empty milk jugs with the top cut off) with scary/fun sticker faces.  We used these for bowling and then the kids each kept their jug to collect candy and prizes throughout the night (and could use for trick or treating too if they wanted).  We played the eye ball bounce (bouncing ping pong balls into candy-filled cups.  if they make the shot, they keep the candy.) and pin-the-spider-on-the-web.  We tried playing pumpkin patch (musical chairs using paper plates featuring a giant pumpkin) but my kids were too tired (having missed naptime) and not understanding the game, promptly broke down into tears.  So instead we played the music for a costume parade, played our roll-a-skeleton game (a dice game, each number gives you another piece of our skeleton, first skeleton fully assembled wins) and ended the night with our traditional monster mash (everyone is generously adorned with glow stick bracelets while we turn out the lights and dance).  Eventually we turned on a movie downstairs so the kids could unwind as we cleaned up and our guests trickled out to their own homes.