Halloween

 For Halloween our family all settled and were excited to have costumes with a theme for the whole family.  I was pretty excited.  Our theme was:  the wizard of oz.....or the lizard of oz.  :)

 Claire was the lion, Jed was the scarecrow, I was the wicked witch of the west, Madelyn was Dorothy, and Hannah and Lily were munchkins.  This was the second day of dressing up and Drew decided his tin man wasn't comfortable....so here he is being Harry Potter.  I sure wish I could have gotten a picture with the entire ensemble.
(The skeletons with us are Jody and Donna, Jed's parents)

 A close-up of the cutest lion....

Random picture of Lily heading to the car....

By the looks of Halloween.....it all went pretty smooth......  But there are some things the pictures just don't capture.  And to be honest, Halloween Eve ended up being rather stressful!  We had constant partying for an entire week, Hannah's birthday included.  And our ward trunk-r-treat was actually a lot of work.  It was a chili cook-off/service auction/trunk-r-treat.  I signed up for the chili cook-off, not because I have a recipe I've perfected....more because they needed food for the activity.  In fact, I don't even remember making chili....no, probably once or twice.  Anyway, I had signed up to donate cinnamon rolls and several hairbows for the auction and because of Halloween costuming and Hannah's birthday stuff I had only done two bows before the big day.  So here I was in a big rush all day long to do the chili, cinnamon rolls, bows, mend Madelyn' dorothy dress, make the red sparkle slippers, finish other last minute costume stuff, and single handedly bring all that stuff and the dress the kids and bring them to the big shebang.  Not to mention keep track of all the kids and feed them and try to bid on auction stuff....

And on top of that, Jed was in charge of the whole thing, and had been working on it for months in advance.  It was hairy and stressful for him as well.  We hardly talked to each other all day until 10:00 pm when we just crashed and left the house as a complete bombshell.  I really don't think it had been that messy before!  It was an awesome activity though, very well attended and supported.  The kids had fun.  I just wish I could have been a little more chill.  The stress was getting to me, and unfortunately, I made it known.

The next day I had some resolve to relax a little bit more for the real Halloween.  But the house was totally turned upside down and needed all sorts of work.  Somehow when the kids got home from school, things got hairy again.  I was trying to make a hot meal for their little tummies, help with homework, keep the house nice.....etc.  You've heard enough.  Suffice it to say, it was a challenge to maintain my patience once again! 

Lesson learned.

I'm not going to sign up for too much next year.  Even though I was pretty prepared, I still had a lot left to do.  I'm just going to have fun, relax, and just enjoy that family time.

  I have next year's costumes all planned out.  It is a theme again that everyone is excited about.  In fact, we all stayed up a little later one night  just thinking who would be who....and what we would need.  Hopefully I can collect stuff all year round for the costumes so no more mad dashes to DI or Wal-Mart!   I do love Halloween....just instead of having costumes 80% done before the big days...they are going to be 100% done by October first......

we'll see......  :)