Halloween

Since we have had so much going on in the past little bit, I had decided to make Halloween pretty low key around here.  I went through my mom's old Halloween box and found a cute witch that would fit Sydney and a pumpkin that would fit Cooper.  I thought it would be perfect, because the two costumes looked really cute together, and then I wouldn't really have to spend time/money trying to find/make costumes.  So I told the kids what they were going to be for Halloween, making sure to make the costumes sound extra cool and fun.  They both seemed fine with the ideas, so I was excited to be done with my Halloween preparations.  

As Halloween got closer, we started talking about it a lot in preschool.  Sydney would excitedly yell, "I'm going to be a witch!"  While all the other girls said, "I'm going to be a barbie-mermaid/barbie-fairy/rapunzel/princess."  So Sydney got the idea in her head that a witch wasn't a very good costume and decided that she wanted to be Cinderella.  One of Sydney's best friends, not in preschool, was actually going to be a witch, so I kept telling her, "Kate's going to be a witch!  You two will be the cutest witches!"  Sydney would seem ok with the idea for a little bit, but always kept going back to the idea of Cinderella.  Sydney does have Cinderella dress ups already, so it was an easy costume to pull off, but I really wanted her to dress up in something that she didn't already wear every day.  I kept trying to push the witch idea.  As I was pushing this idea, Cooper got it in his head, and he decided that he wanted to be a witch.  (I guess I was very convincing... just to the wrong child!)  Then I had two kids who didn't want to wear their Halloween costumes.  Finally the night before Halloween, I caved and decided Sydney could be Cinderella.  I just wanted her to be happy on Halloween, and happy she was.  Then I had to figure out how to make Cooper happy.  Luckily, his pumpkin costume is made out of an orange fabric with ghosts, pumpkins, and witches on it.  So I showed him the witch on the pumpkin costume and told him he could be a "pumpkin-witch!"  He loved the idea.  So for Halloween 2011 we had the pumpkin-witch and Cinderella!

We had preschool the morning of Halloween and it was such a fun day.  The kids were so excited about their costumes and our little party, and they actually did really well.  It was probably one of my easiest days teaching, which isn't common.  Halloween can be a pretty difficult day for teachers.  It did help that Lindsey and I were both there, and we had a mother helper :)  We did a little costume parade, where the kids would come out, stand in front of all the parents, say what they were dressed up as, turn around twice, and shout out "Happy Halloween!"  Sydney loved it.  She wasn't the least bit shy.

We didn't have a ton of time for trick-or-treating that day because Matt was working at the greenhouse and worked pretty late.  But the kids did go to a few houses and loved it! We also visited my parents and the Walch family. Everyone kept telling Cooper what a cute pumpkin he was and he would get mad and say, "No! punkin-witch!"  So funny.  I'm sure he's the only pumpkin-witch there ever was.  It was a great Halloween.  Kids really make it so much more fun.

Our pumpkin-witch... he never lets go of Bootsy

Beautiful Cinderella

Sydney even dressed her baby Abby up

That smile made it all worth it!