Pumpkins!

First installment of the pumpkin carving ritual. We really should just buy into the whole 'family pumpkin' instead of carving five. And somehow an errant sixth pumpkin made it into our wheelbarrow at the ol' pumpkin farm (that happens when you have a gaggle of people you are trying to control in a retail establishment. Too many pumpkins, bunches of skittles in fists of toddlers who are in the plastic vehicle part of the cart at the grocery store that you have to carry back in with said child and profusely apologize for raising a clepto, wondering the whole time if it's some sort of a sting operation.)

We made it to the pumpkin patch at 5:10pm (patch closes at 6pm). Got pumpkins. Little boys trekked through the corn maze. Big boy was too cool to do things like that so he hung out. Little girls bounced in an oversized air filled pumpkin. The whole time, the young male attendant would come over to comment on how cute they were, and Fifi would cry for mommy and stop jumping. Finally I had to be a meanie and just plain out tell the dude in the pirate hat, "my kid's afraid of you. Don't come over here." I'm sorry to hurt your feelings, but really,...we paid $3 for her to jump. Leave us in peace.

Sunday meant trunk or treating at the Church parking lot. Every year I have visions of decorating our Suburban and doling out candy and every year I am waylayed by too much football and small children needing my attention. And this year, it was the dreaded ghillie suit.

Argh. What's a ghillie suit you ask? It's a camo suit covered in tree branches and the like that hunters use to hide from those maurauding ducks. Then they became popular with paint ballers. Now, we don't hunt ducks or shoot paint ball guns, so I wasn't about to buy $70 ghillie suits for two boys who thought it would be fun to dress up like that for halloween. I'm all for delusion in my life, so even though it's a well known fact I can not sew (nor am I really too crafty - I had white flowers at my wedding because I couldn't pick a color) I am a bargain hunter and set out to make the ghillie suits, not buy them. To walmart for $15 camo sweatsuits. To Michael's for spray on adhesive and various fake leafy plants; ivies, fronds of ferns, waxy deciduous leaves, along with a big needle and some thread. (Seriously, I send my clothes to the cleaners for them to sew on a button. Pathetic.)


HOURS (and I mean hours) later, I have one suit ready to go for Sunday's 'dead run' at trunk or treat. The suit has leaves sewn all over it on the top with moss on the top and the bottom. It sheds. A lot. So it can not come in the house. (that's saying much from an owner of a German Shepherd and a Husky - too majorly shedding dogs).

I lay it carefully in the back of the Suburban so we can transport the specimen to the Church. Carefully put child into ghillie suit. He refuses to paint his face in camo to match, so most people have no idea what the heck he is and start to refer to him as a 'tree.'

What are the rest of the clan? Let me break it down for you: I went EARLY to KMart (gack! Of all places!) to get costumes or the girls - B was a cute fairy with a light up skirt. She didn't want her hair combed or to wear shoes. She was going for that total 'Tinkerbell lives in the forest with a bunch of orphan boys and so do I' look, but I finally talked her into some ballet slippers. Other than that she totally looked the part of the fairy on the island of lost boys,...

Fifi was to be a CUTE, cute, cute little unicorn - complete with an adorable little body suit in the shape of a white hershey's kiss with purple wings (I know unicorns don't have wings, just go with it. It was cute.), little white hoof shaped shoe covers and a white hat with a purple horn. She DID NOT LIKE IT. I threw her little blue ballet jammies complete with frilly skirt from Grandma Z and some pink sparkle shoes on her and she was good to go.

K was the ghillie monster, er, tree. J (the cool one) was to be a mad scientist like last year, but he left the lab coat and crazy glasses at home, so all he wore was a crazy hair whig. Which was enough to have the middle school girls thinking he was that-kind-of-minimalist-halloween-cool and slyly follow our group around the parking lot. (I saw you girls.)

Z - ddn't have the ghillie suit done in time so he threw on an old skeleton costume, his Duck's hockey jersey and put a bag on his hockey stick. Dead hockey player. Excellent, CHEAP, easy,.. and he won FIRST PRIZE for scariest costume. Go figure.

I threw on some stuff (complete with stuffed parrot! It's amazing the stuff we've accumulated in the halloween box after 12 years of kid halloweens!) and went as a pirate wench.

Pumpkin patch again with B and about 50 crazy toddlers this past Tuesday, today is her 'harvest party.' I've got the orange jello ready to go. Friday is the Radio Disney party at the Elementary school (there are good things about being in Southern Cal), and the necessity for me to torture myself for 30 minutes in the 'crush the can' booth. Saturday is three football games in Thermal, Cal. (so appropriate for halloween - we're playing football in hell! Excellent!) Then small dinner party for whoever wants to show up at our house, then trick or treating through our neighborhood. Then, a few kids will spend the night, ensuring we don't actually rest until next weekend. Oh wait, that's Z's birthday. Never mind then.