Halloween Festivities

This post is apt to be huge, considering I am lumping all of our Halloween festivities into a single post.  Consider yourself forewarned.  

Last Monday night, we participated in the annual Kaiser Family Pumpkin Carving Contest.  This is something my family has done for probably five or six years running now.  And there is certainly a good incentive to participate--a $20 cash prize!  We always email pictures of our carved pumpkins to my family, and they email us theirs, so we can all see each other's and cast votes.  This year McKay wanted a Tow Mater pumpkin:

And of course Ty chose to do McQueen:

By the end of the night Ty was a mess.  That tends to happen when he stays up late!

But in the end I guess it was worth it because Ty was the winner this year!  He was thrilled when his cash prize arrived:

 

And just in time, too.  He bought the new Cars 2 DVD with his winnings.  Appropriate, I suppose, considering his jack-o-lantern.  ;)

On Thursday we went to a special Music Makers, where all the songs were Halloween-themed and the kids got to trick-or-treat to each Mommy!  The boys loved it, but I didn't get any pictures.

Friday we invited our entire Sunbeam class to a party at our house.  Sometimes I think I must be a little crazy.  Nine 3- and 4-year olds.  Yikes!  I was grateful a couple of the moms stayed and helped out--it could have been pretty wild all by myself!
We played pin the head on the skeleton:

And a fun game called Grab the Ghost:

Then we did the pumpkin beanbag toss.

And we finished off by decorating cookies.

I would say it was a success!

On Saturday we had our ward party.  There was dinner, carnival-style games, and a trunk or treat.  And I just have to add this in here:  one of the games was a shooting range where the kids could shoot monsters with nerf guns.  Ty had the best score of the entire night, of any age kid!  He shot down all six monsters in just four shots.  Apparently he was acting well his part of Woody!
Here are the boys checking out their loot after the party:

On Monday Ty had a party at preschool.  Daddy was able to get off work early so the two of them could go together.  It worked out perfectly that way--McKay and Mom got a good nap in to prepare for a late night of trick-or-treating!

 

After a dinner of mummy dogs (which the boys LOVED!!), we went trick-or-treating around the block.  The weather was perfect, and it was a lot of fun, although Ty commented at the end of the night, "Wow, trick-or-treating really wore me down tonight."  Love him!

YEE-HAW!! 

The boys finished the night with hot chocolate in pumpkin cups that G&G Marchant sent in their Halloween package.  

It was a LOT of Halloween this year.  My friend Beth cleverly coined the term "Halloweekend" to describe all the time we spent celebrating--and it's certainly a fitting word.  I am pretty Halloweened out, I would say.  But we spent this chilly, snowy morning getting all our Halloween decorations down and Thanksgiving up.  Crazy that Thanksgiving is just three weeks away!