Today we had one of those scares.
The kind where you think you lost your photos off in technology land. April through September of last year had disappeared and I had begun moving through the stages of grief, considering all of the milestones and fun that would not be remembered as vividly.
I was sad.
But then...
JC found them.
Stages of grief stopped, and rejoicing commenced!
And...I felt rather motivated to get things organized and very accounted for. And getting this blog up to date is part of that! Since it is sort of my virtual photo album. And eventually will be an actual photo album/storybook of the youngest years of our family.
So, here we are...finishing out October of 2011 with talk of Halloween!
Like all years for the past few, celebrations began with a preschool parade!
This time it was Benny Boy!!
AKA Rafael.
There he is, waving to me. :)
And...still waving to me.
I. Love. That. Mask.
And I love that nearly every chance he gets, Ben waves hello to his mama.
There's the whole bunch of them!
And, after the parade, I got to take the little ninja turtle home with me.
What a lucky gal I am.
We happened to have Dr. appointments on Halloween! So, we wore our costumes. The kids thought this was pretty cool.
High five for costumes at the Dr's office.
Big fun getting ready for the ward trunk-or-treat!
We had an Optimus Prime, Elphaba, and Rafael.
All lookin' good.
Super cute.
Super lovely.
Super fun.
Daddy joined them, dressed as a hunter.
Wasn't hard to find that costume around here!
There was lots of fun during the carnival portion of the trunk-or-treat!
Games like a bean bag toss!
Friends like Shorey!
More games like mini-golf.
Good hit!
Nice putting.
Here, James is being coached on the correct stance.
Whatever this is, it looks like fun!
Fishing for treats is always...a treat!
Another friend! Our friend, Rockwell dressed up as Harry Potter. This was very exciting for us because we had started our new tradition of watching a Harry Potter movie every Halloween. We had watched the first Harry Potter a few nights before and to see one of our good friends representing our new hero was nifty.
There were hot dogs, of course.
And there were special moments when two allies found each other.
Optimus Prime found Bumblebee.
(James found Alec...it's all the same.)
The cake walk was there, as always.
And...as always...James struggled to understand why the game doesn't cater to his every whim.
Every year the cake walk makes him cry.
It is super exciting.
Oh, the injustice.
Ben won a cupcake. They all eventually did!
Then...everyone was kind of done with all the festivities. And we retired to the car to eat suckers.
Sometimes before the big day, we got our pumpkin carving on!
We had never carved pumpkins as a family before! It was a bit too much of an undertaking so we always painted them or colored them or something...we ended up carving this year and the kids thought it was super gross!
Hi Ben.
Bethany was pretty sure she wanted to keep the pumpkin insides...inside.
James was just happy to be there.
I was a good sport.
If you ask me.
JC managed to make the experience grosser than it already was.
That's what we keep him around for, of course.
And here we have the finished products!
The kids' pumpkins.
I had made them little papers with different ideas of eyes, nose, and mouth shapes and let them choose from them. That way JC had a general idea of what to create for each of them.
Turned out pretty good!
With various ways to celebrate, Halloween was a fun time for all for yet another year! Many more to come!
