Halloween Weekend

Another year, another Halloween. This year's Halloween was almost ruined by an illness called Croup, but luckily it was quickly overcame and James was able to enjoy Halloween in all its glory. James chose to be a Gladiator this year...not by personal choice but by picking it out of what was available at Costco (I mean, they seriously have everything). It turned out really cute so I'm glad he chose that one.

I think his favorite part was getting to have a sword...what can I say, he is his father's child :-). James got the Croup the Wednesday before Halloween, which was on the following Monday. We had planned on taking him to our church's Halloween carnival which was being held on the Friday before. Luckily he seemed to be feeling much better by then, so we headed to the carnival. James had a blast playing all of the games and eating his fair share of candy. Hopefully this carnival will be a yearly tradition because he really enjoyed it.

James playing the fishing game @ the carnival

The next day (Saturday) we lazed around and decided it was time to carve our pumpkins. James at first was excited about the prospect of taking the goop out of the pumpkin, but that quickly changed when he realized how gross it was. So he decided to paint his other smaller pumpkin instead.

Attempting to take goo out

On to painting!

The finished products

Finally Halloween was upon us and James was really excited because it meant he could dress up for school. Every year his school puts on a Halloween parade. And I use the term "parade" loosely since all they really do is walk around the school parking lot in a circle, while all the parents snap pictures and scream their child's name to get their attention. Regardless it is really cute to see all of the children dressed up and to see how excited they are about the whole affair.

Our little family ready for the parade 





James dressed up and enjoying the parade





After an eventful day at school, James came home with nothing on his mind except Trick-or-Treating. Unfortunately, it was only 3 pm and we still had a few hours to kill before we could venture out. Plus I got a wild hair up my ass and decided that I wanted to make a Halloween feast for dinner, which included homemade pumpkin soup, beef stew baked in a pumpkin and adorable little salads that were placed in jack-o-lantern oranges. Oh, and pumpkin pie for dessert. If you're interested in the recipes, they can be found on my other post, Fun Halloween Recipes.

By 6 pm, we couldn't hold our little trick-or-treater off any longer, so we headed out to do some trick-or-treating. First and foremost, we headed over to Papa and Gigi's, where the best candy always is. Here are the photos from trick-or-treating:

Hand over the candy now!

 Getting candy from Gigi

 James with Papa

On to the next house

After hitting some more houses (and after we decided James had MORE than enough candy) we headed home to have our Halloween Feast. My brother, his wife and new daughter were coming over to join us as well. The dinner turned out really well and I think I may make this a yearly tradition as long as we don't have any Halloween parties that interfere. The dinner wasn't that difficult to make and everyone really enjoyed it, even James. Although he was more than happy to finish the meal if it meant he could get some of his Halloween candy.

The pumpkin soup (I used cream to make the spider web) & the beef stew baked in a pumpkin

 The cute little salads (I used the juice from the oranges in the salad dressing)

 My sis-in-law with my niece Louisa (love the costume!)

 James holding Louisa

Our pumpkins all lit up (I made the ghost one and I was really proud of myself :-))

Hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween! Until next year!