"there are 3 things you must never discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin." {halloween 2012}

"A person should always choose a costume which is in direct contrast to her own personality. "

-Lucy, 

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

my kids have been loving charlie brown & his friends for a couple of years now, so when we asked caleb if he wanted to dress up as the grumpy main character and he jumped on the idea, we went for it.   we're thinking this will probably be one of the last years we can do a family theme, without having to dress up like transformers or something caleb's into, or princess cupcake fairy my little ponies like leah will want us to, so we made the most of our last "themed" halloween.  

since i am not even a tiny bit of a seamstress, we bought leah & june's costumes, and caleb's shirt.  so much easier on me, especially since we were out of town until october 22nd and didn't have a lot of time to pull {or hot glue}  it together.  ben and i went to the goodwill for our parts of the costume, except for my wig.  last year i wore a wig and had fun with it, i think i'm going to search for a costume each year that i can wear a new one.  

we went to 4 different halloween parties, so at least i felt like the money we spent on the purchased costumes wasn't a complete waste.

here we are, in all of our glory:

woodstock {missing her head by this point}, sally, linus {minus his blankie he left in the car} snoopy and charlie brown

i'd say it was a hit, especially little woodstock.  june has shoes that squeak when she walks around, which was everybody's favorite part of our costumes.  she absolutely loved trick or treating, and even though she didn't get to eat any of the candy she earned {i kind of have a thing about my young kids eating sugar}, she didn't seem to mind.

and now, for more pictures:

ben and i decided that we'd dress up as a famous couple each year and let the kids do their own thing....we've already got plans in the works for halloween 2013!

villains vs. superheroes

happy halloween!!!

a party fit for superheroes and jedis.

i've been friends with marielle since high school and was so excited to hear that she & her cute family also ended up in arizona...and now we live about 10 minutes away from her.  she & her husband scott were nice enough to invite us & another HS friend & his family over for a Halloween party.  

unfortunately, the other family couldn't make it since the lovely strep throat plague had hit their daughter.  but we jedis still went over in full costume for some delicious food and fun times.  

yes in case you're wondering, i am wearing the yoda toddler costume as a shirt.  i just couldn't justify the $ for the adult-sized one, so when i found the smaller version {designed to fit a 1-2 yr old} on sale, i went for it.  my aim is to use halloween as my opportunity to look as foolish as possible.  i think green is my new signature color.  who needs crest whitestrips?  just paint your face green and bam!  your teeth look as bright white as when they first popped through your gums.

marielle's family dressed up as different superheroes and their boys kept us laughing with their superhero poses.  and scott's props came in handy, the boys played with them all night long.  i'm pretty sure all our kids will be getting for christmas is a bunch of socks wrapped up to look like sausages. 

as you can see toward the end of the pictures, princess leah wasn't feeling well.  poor little girl, we were hoping she'd be feeling better but she wasn't.  i was actually really happy that we'd dressed up since it will probably be the one time our family will be going out together.  

with leah sick, she's going to stay home & ben & i will be switching off cavorting darth vadar around to shamelessly beg for sugared snacks....which we will then get to watch collect dust in our cupboards to be re-used for next year's candy to hand out to unsuspecting children.  

we are totally that family.

thanks rasmussens {pronounced completely incorrectly, just for fun} for the great party! 

all for one...

caleb has been obsessed with this show for several months now:

and ben, being the good dad he is, got a creative idea. caleb as a musketeer for halloween? why not. but instead of buying the costume ($35), ben decided to make it. that's right, make it. i have to admit i was pretty skeptical. but we are talking about a man and a dream here people. turns out ben and a glue gun make a deadly team.

here is ben martha stewart strader hard at work:

and a picture of him wearing the half-finished product...

and now, for the unveiling of the masterpiece...
(let's pretend those are tears of joy in the corner of his eyes. he wasn't happy about the fashion show.)

caleb loved it, especially the sword.

can you believe it? he drew the fleur de lis freestyle. with puff paint, nonetheless.

there's nothing like a little blood, sweat and one HUGE thumb blister (still healing) to make for a great time. we had a fun halloween...a ward trunk-or-treat, then trick-or-treating with our friends the beckers last night. (thanks again for the fun! and i'm not as socially retarded as ben said. i am socially retarded, just not to the level he proposed.)

ben set the bar for this year, i'm excited to see halloween 2009.

hope everyone had a great time!

for carmella...

we went to a halloween party on friday and decided to get in the spirit as john mccain & sarah palin. our friends the beckers, that were throwing the party are big obama fans so we thought we should bristle some feathers! (luckily we weren't thrown out)

we went to savers & i bought a very tacky jacket & skirt. the jacket was too big up top but had to be big enough for the belly so i looked a little awkward but you get the point. the more pictures i saw of myself the more unflattering i realized that jacket was.

or maybe it's just my face that's unflattering. this is me with a gun shooting caleb's stuffed baby moose in true palin style.

ben mastered the awkward mccain smile. and completed the look with an old man walking stick. sorry the picture is messed up again, i don't know what happened.

we made buttons that said:

• 72 is the new 30
• hunt or be hunted
• baby #6? with an arrow pointing to my stomach
• i *heart* alaska
• former beauty queen

we had a great time and are excited that we got to know some more phoenix peeps. thanks for the great party!


and p.s.... becoming a brunette? i think i kinda like it. hmmmm.....