HaLLoWeeN 2010

CoRbIn - The Mummy.  Costume hand-sewn by Dad with first aid gauze. Head wrap and face paint my Mom.  Butterfly bandage (yes, it's real) from getting hit by a door at school.

CoDy - The Ninja.  Black shirt and pants from DI, weapons $5 at Walmart.  The rest of the costume, including the mask, silver stripes and velcro chinese stars sewn by Dad. 

CoLtOn - The Frog.  Costume hand-me down from big brother.  He was a little cranky for pics because he had just woken from a nap, but he was the best little hopper ever.  When anyone asked him what he was going to be for Halloween, he would hop and say "ribbit, ribbit."

And the festivities included . . .

Corbin's party at school.  Colton helped me with the game station.  Then we got to watch all the kids parade through the school and around the black top.  That was fun.

Visiting Grandma Sharee at her school.  Corbin actually had Friday off, so we went to see Despicable Me at the dollar movie and then to see Grandma in her cute farm girl costume.

Fire Dept Halloween Party.  Chili cook-off, cake walk, pinatas, pumpkin bowling (by moi), trunk or treat and lots of fun.  And Corbin won 1st place for best costume.  It was a great night.

On Saturday, Main Street trick or treat while daddy & Colton took a nap.  It's fun to see the scarecrows and to see everyone's costumes in the daylight.  But it's getting more and more crowded every year, it was fun, but I don't think we'll be doing it again.

And of course, the traditional trick or treating on Halloween (which actually occurs on Saturday in Utah when Halloween falls on the Sabbath).  This picture was actually taken the night before.  Which was good.  I got NO pictures of the actual Halloween, because it was rainy and yucky and the first time Russ and the kids attempted to go out, they actually got hailed on.  Luckily they were still in our cul-de-sac, but they had to make a run for it and that was a bit frightening.  But after about an hour it cleared and then the whole neighborhood was out.  It turned out not too bad, although you couldn't really see anyone's costume's because they were all covered with coats, gloves and hats.  Oh well, the kids had fun, that's all that counts.  We ended the night with a scary Scooby Doo movie and popcorn.  It was a good night.

Skamania Day 5 - The last FULL day

I know, it's getting old, this whole Skamania thing, but I can't start posting about our vacation day by day and then not finish.  But I did really struggle with the title, because my brother informed me that everytime he saw one of these postings, he read it as Ska (as in the type of music) -mania (as in some sort of craziness) and originally he's thinking "wow, I didn't know they were into that".  So now everytime I think of Skamania, that's what I think too.  Oh well.  Onto our day...

We started the morning by playing around the outside of the hotel. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and from the back of our hotel, there was an awesome view of the gorge.

playing "rock band" in the ampitheatre behind the hotel (there was a beautiful wedding there the night before)

Then it was off to hike one of the trails that head out from the lodge.  We chose the "Creek Loop Trail", because it had lots of bridges, we got to pass a couple cool little lagoons, and it weaved in and out of the gorgeous golf course.

 And all along the way we got to eat lots and lots of berries!

 The boys' other favorite part was hunting for golf balls...

Then we headed up the gorge and found a yummy place to eat lunch.  Looks cheesy, but they had THE best cinnamon roll french toast EVER.

We spent the afternoon at the Columbia River Gorge Discovery Center. We learned all about Lewis and Clark; how the gorge was formed; how the early settlers made it through and lots of other interesting things.  It was really quite fun.  They had a whole room just for kids to play - dig for fossils, dress up, make crafts.  It was great!

Hooray for our fun day!  Now back to the hotel for some swimming!  (Of course.)

Trick or Treat

Not too many stories to tell about Halloween this year. I always love seeing my kids dressed up in their costumes and they love trick or treating.

Ready for trick or treating on Main Street . . . I was a gypsy ( it started out as a fortune teller, but the boys lost my awesome crystal ball and I was no longer able to foretell the future). We used to love the Main Street Trick or Treat, because it gave us something fun to do during the day on Halloween, but now there are SO many people; I don't know that we will do it again next year. We may have to find some other fun activity - any ideas?

At any rate, it was fun and Corbin's costume was VERY popular. At first he really didn't like everyone pointing and commenting, but I explained to him that this was a good thing. It meant that they liked his costume and they thought he looked awesome. By the end he was totally proud of it and was smiling from ear to ear every time someone said something.

Corbin and I had been looking at lots of costume ideas in magazines and online and when we came across this, we knew it was just the one for him. He picked yellow because that was his favorite color. I made the hat a little different than the one we saw, and I think the whole costume turned out pretty sweet.

Cody found this costume in our costume box weeks ago, and has loved it ever since. Aside from the fact that we always call him "Cody-bug", I think it totally fits his cute, busy little personality. I loved watching him run around cause the little bum would wiggle as he ran from one person to the next. I also loved that he refered to him self as caterpillar ("Caterpillars love suckers", as he opens yet another piece of candy), and we were expected to do the same ("Mom, you have to say 'Caterpillar wash your hands, not Cody wash your hands'").

Have you ever seen a cuter monkey? Colton's costume was very fitting as we have called him "Monkey", or "Monk" for short, since he was about 9 months old and would do this cling on thing with every time you held him. Plus he has these scrawny little arms and legs and can manuever like only little flexible 1 year olds can. He's just so cute! I wanted to paint his face like a little monkey, but I figured that wouldn't work so well, since I spend half my day wiping something from his nose, mouth, chin, etc. Colton spent most of the day with a sucker or other piece of candy in his mouth. My only consolation was that he drooled most of the sugar onto his outfit and he rarely actually finished what he was eating before moving onto the next piece.

Back at the homestead we got ready for some more trick or treating around the neighborhood. I love where we live, it is so kid friendly! Although, thanks to Russ's awesome webbing skills, some kids were afraid to come to our door - there were several parents who came bearing their child's bag.

As we headed out that evening, Cody decided he would rather hang around with Dad and play, so I pushed Colton around while Corbin trick or treated with Hermoine and a storm trooper (aka Nadia and David).

Halloweening

This year it seemed like getting ready for Halloween was as fun as the holiday itself . . . Here's a little taste of the goings on the last week or so leading up to the big day.

Carving Pumpkins: The boys did about two scoops and then decided they didn't really like that part, so since Dad is the artistic one and does most of the carving, I got to do all the dirty work. We were pretty happy with the final product though.

Remember those squash things I posted about a couple weeks ago. Well, since we have probably 50+ of them, I decided to try and do something creative with them. The boys thought it was cool. I thought it was a pain to cut out all the wings, and then they just kept falling off. A couple of them actually lasted till Halloween though, so that was good. The boys had fun with the painting, so I guess it was a successful project.

Even though the boys have had their costumes picked out for months (thanks to my mom's awesome garage sale find), they insisted on trying on costumes from previous years to see what the really wanted to be. Corbin even somehow managed to fit into his frog costume from when he was 2!









Wait, is that one of my kids?

And finally our Jack'o'Lantern Pizza. Yum Yum.