It just might be our 6yo’s very favorite holiday, Halloween. He plans for it, deciding who he’ll be, looking through costumes online and in catalogs. And hot on his tail was our 2yo this year, asking anyone (stranger or no), “Whatryou gonna dreth up ath?” If you happened to say something that he didn’t understand (like me, I answered, “Rosie the Riveter”), you got the “well you’re about as dumb as a box of rocks” look. That one’ll pierce you right through.

There is event after event. So many, in fact, that we have to eliminate one or two each year, because I’m not sure if we’d make it through the sugar-induced stupor we seem to fall into.

Added in this year was his school-wide costume parade, followed by a party done nearly speed-dating style, all at the beginning of their day so they could easily move into their work afterward.

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Each class was brought into the gym, and parents and siblings were waiting, SRO. The little guy clapped his heart out for every class we saw.

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He loves a party. So does his buddy, below, who roared like a dinosaur vehemently at every passerby and then got a little ticked off when no one threw candy his way. All he got was a stinkin’ bat ring, like our boy is sporting above on his index finger.

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After the parade, we ran up to Harry Potter’s classroom for the speed-dating-I-mean-activity-stations.

There was ghost tossing…

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Slimy wormy guts…

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He wouldn’t touch them no way no how.

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And after a quick Oompah Loompah song (which freaked out the 2yo, and then it didn’t, and then it did again)…

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There was the mummy wrap (hilarious and the hugest hit, ever)…

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And the pumpkin painting.

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Every bit of this was done in an hour and 40 minutes, start to finish. The whole school. Parade and everything. They’ve got it dialed in, baby. The Rev even swiped a fun sucker.

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Each year, we host a quick, down and dirty, appetizer/dinner at our house before sending the kids out into the neighborhood for trick-or-treating. We figure that it’s a last ditch effort to poke some real food down into their bellies before they hit their candy buckets. Literally, our “party” lasts about 45 minutes and they’re off. It happens so quickly that I have no time to snap pictures of the fun food that everyone brings, but I do want to share this very awesome thing: mummy juice boxes. So stinkin’ cute. Just wrap juice boxes (remove straws first!) with white duct tape and put sticky googley eyes on them. Voila. Mummy juice boxes. Hilarious.

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Also hilarious? Cows. This one in particular.

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Don’t her feet look too petite for her chubster legs? Love and swoon.

Sheesh. I just can’t keep my camera away from the babies. Cutie patootie skeleton baby.

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Our other fine tradition is the coming of the Switch Witch. Our boys pick out their favorite pieces of candy from their buckets at the end of the evening (about five), and put the rest in a pile on the kitchen table for the Switch Witch. She comes in the middle of the night and switches out their candy for a toy, and you’d think it was Christmas Eve or something. The boys can’t wait to see what she leaves behind.

Case in point, a new cap gum.

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She totally blew it this year for the little guy, though. She brought him a Winnie the Pooh movie and a Diego book. He cried and cried because he didn’t get a new toy, which makes sense since he pretty much doesn’t ever get toys, just the hand-me-downs from big brother (which are all awesome, btw).

Still, we felt like huge piles of poop. We had no idea that a new toy would be so important. Woops.

We are crap parents.

Ha.

Hope you had a great weekend and a Happy Halloween. Lucky for us, we have dentist appointments next week. Oy. Wish us luck.

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