The West's Blog: Halloween Parties

Yes, I know Halloween is over (phew), but this year, with 2 and 3 year olds hanging on every last spooky detail of the occasion it was practically the biggest "holiday" of the year. There were parties almost every weekend of the month, school performances, and due to ever changing preferences, I had at least 7 costumes on hand at all times. So here are A LOT of pictures from some of the parties we attended in October. One was an amazing bash put on by the family of one of Spencer's preschool classmates, complete with 2 huge bouncy houses, face painting, balloon artist, pinata, cotton candy machine and more... This was one of the only days that the boys wore their 3 Little Pigs costume I put together for them. Since they refused to put on the cute pig noses and tails, I never got a good picture of them in the complete costume, and then...they got their faces painted. The face paints they picked out accurately reflected both their personalities and levels of practical decision making associated with their "building materials". Owen, with the bricks, chose a small, sensible Thomas paint for his forearm; Spencer, with the sticks, chose a moderately strange green monster biting his eye; and Oliver, with his straw, was dead set on getting the boldest and most scary face paint option available!!! I tried, but honestly could not talk him out of that one. The cute, 3 Little Pigs idea I had in my head didn't turn out quite as planned, but they were adorable (and funny) in their own way! And toward the end are pictures of our Happy Jack-O-Lantern, carved just hours before Halloween night. Owen was determined to have one lighting up our front porch and insisted that he have a big smiley face with diamond shaped eyes and a circle nose. Our neighbors held a fun driveway party late that afternoon for families with young kids, and then when it got dark out we all went trick-or-treating together. Everyone was so eager to be the first to the ring door bells. The boys still don't understand the concept of taking just one piece of candy (at least they pretend not to) and since our neighborhood doesn't get many trick-or-treaters, most people gladly encouraged the kids to take hand fulls of candy for their buckets! But by the time Halloween night rolled around, I think we'd had enough tricks and treats that month to last until next year!!