Hooray for Halloween!

Halloween preparation started early this year, when Avery found a decoration at Lowe's at the end of August that he absolutely loooooved.  It was a 6 foot tall animatronic skeleton in a large cage, whose eyes glowed red and all of the bones intermittently shook.  It was also $179 dollars.  Sooo.....based on price and limited amount of storage space we have here, I had to pass on that decoration. (Fast forward three months to mid-November when Avery told Ninny that he was saving up the money in his pirate chest to buy that shaking skeleton....*heart breaking*....worst. mother. ever). 

 

Seeing that skeleton got Avery in the mood for Halloween, and he spent the next two months drawing all kinds of pictures with scary witches, ghosts, werewolves, and vampires.

Of course, we had to bust out the personalized Halloween shirts that Ninny made for the kids last year.  Everyone on the playground commented on them.

 The kids had to break in their Halloween costumes of a ninja and fairy one month early.

 Avery loved coloring the fall puppets MawMaw sent him.

We attended a pumpkin carving party a few weeks before Halloween.  Note: there is no picture of the final pumpkin because apparently I can not carve art into the side of a gourd.  I am not surprised.

 My pumpkin is the one with the bat on it....or the pumpkin that looks like it got shot in the face at close range.

 We had to have fun at the Halloween/party stores, trying on masks and wigs.

 In lieu of the disappointing carving job by Mommy, we decided to paint the rest of our pumpkins.  Thank God the kids have more creative artistic talent than I do.

And finally, the night of Halloween arrived!  We enjoyed trick or treating with Avery's little buddy down the street.  And I don't know what is going to happen in February when the plastic pumpkins are finally empty and the kids realize that dinner is not automatically followed by a piece of Halloween candy.  Prepare for mutiny!