Halloween Adventures

               So, I know Halloween is officially over, but I have been waiting to post all things Halloween at once. Which would mean I had to wait until it was all over. I don't know if it was just me or if all mom's felt this way, but it seemed like we have been celebrating Halloween FOREVER! It was like the infinite holiday this year, and as most of you all know Halloween is my least favorite holiday. I am sure that factor made it seem even longer. I will say that I do like decorating my house for Halloween, there is way to much cute stuff out there not to.

              Our festivities began weeks ago at the kid's school carnival. Each grade was given an assignment to prepare for the event. The second grade was assigned to make cakes for the cake walk. I thought it would be good for Izzy to plan and decorate the cake herself. We went through Pintrest for ideas... this was not a good idea. Isabel seemed to have a lot more confidence in her abilities than I did. She was picking all of these crazy extravagant cakes. Finally, I narrowed it down to a couple that a seven year old could create and she picked the spider web. We went to the store and she picked the icings, flavor of the cake mix, and the spider. I baked it while she was at school and then she decorated it. For those of you who know me, you know that it is very hard for me to hand off jobs to my kids and not want to help/fix everything, but Izzy did so well my hand didn't twitch once.

              Near completion of her cake, she looked at me and said, "Mom, this looks really good. Do you think I am great at cake decorating because I am such a good artist?" Her self esteem amazes me.  This time around though, she was absolutely right. She did a really great job.

     After being at the carnival a little while we went over to the cake walk to look for her cake. It was already gone. When we asked if it was in the classroom they told us no, that it had been one of the first ones to get picked. Izzy's face was beaming. Then she could hardly contain herself when we walked by the family carrying her cake.

        This school carnival was awesome. Not only was it fun for the kids, but it was decorated beautifully and very well organized. The kids just loved the bouncy area. They had a section of the playground that was filled with about ten different inflatable slides and games. The thing I thought was the coolest was a graveyard (huge boxes decorated) that kids ran around in with cans of silly string, chasing each other,and using the boxes as barricades. Very clever.

           Mia went down the giant slide about a hundred times. I didn't let her wear her costume. She was going to be Cinderella and we figured the dress would tear with all of the running around.

            Our family really wanted to take a cake home, so we all entered the cake walk at once. It was kind of a Larsen domination type thing. Landon won. Aren't those some cute kids?

Me and the kiddos!

              This was where Landon spent most of his time. Two kids were tethered to each other in the middle, then the ref would blow the whistle and both participants would take off trying to get the football in the post. Most of the time the poor kids wouldn't be prepared for Landon's size or determination and they would just get yanked backwards and fall. You should have seen Izzy and Landon going at it several times. I was surprised how well Isabel held her own against him. They are so dang competitive.

                      Izzy the Cat, made sure she went against people besides Landon so she could win.

     Mia's preschool class went on a pumpkin patch field trip and she was so excited. Mia loves everything about preschool.  She jumps out of bed every morning anxious to go to school. Adding a field trip on top of school and she thought she died and went to heaven. It was nice and overcast with occasional drizzling, which to me is perfect pumpkin patch weather, considering the week before it was in the nineties. I dropped Mia off at school and the parents weren't supposed to come back for an hour. One of the mom's I carpool with and I went to breakfast. It was nice to be kid free and socialize with another adult. Plus there was a really funny story of an eighty year old man telling us how pretty we were and trying to get us to buy him breakfast.

It was nearly impossible to get all of these kids to pose together.

         We had a ton of fun together.  Mia got to go on a hayride, this was what she was most excited about. Then they had a lesson about pumpkins, Then they climbed the pyramid made of hay bales.  She led several of us through a corn maze, it was near impossible to get her out of there. Then we picked our pumpkin to take home. To top it off we went out for pizza afterward with some of her classmates. It was an excellent day for me and my baby.

       Some of you may be wondering where the pictures of the rest of the family at the pumpkin patch are. I have no excuse other than I am a complete failure as a mother. We always go to the pumpkin patch for family home evening, it's been our tradition before the kids were even born. Landon and Ryan have swimming every Monday (yes, Ryan is back to coaching) so FHE usually doesn't happen until 8:30 now. However, there was a Monday this month there would not be practice. I made excellent plans to go to this awesome pumpkin farm everyone here talks about, and then that day I found out that the farm is only open on the weekends. We were crushed. The next two Saturdays were jam packed, so they were out. We thought about going to the local patch, but it had been raining all day and we didn't feel like frolicking in the mud. So for the first time in a decade the Larsen family did not go to the pumpkin patch. Luckily my older two kids are champs and didn't even complain- other than that few minutes after I said we weren't going. So, Mia's pumpkin was all alone on our porch this year.

          Last Saturday was our church Halloween carnival. It was a lot of fun. They had activities throughout the parking lot for the kids to participate in. We had a hot dog and chili dinner. The youth put on a great spook alley, granted we only got about ten feet in before there was panic coursing through our children and our friends kids started to cry... they turned around and exited not even making it half way through. We didn't get to do trunk or treating, because we needed to get home so Ryan could drive down to L.A. for a business trip to Florida. I was kind of relieved we didn't need more candy in the house.

Izzy getting her face painted.

              Some of you may have noticed that Landon is wearing a different costume here than he was wearing at the previous activities. Every year I try to come up with clever costume ideas for the kids, and every year Landon wants to pick out those stupid packaged, nylon, one piece costumes. I tried to tell him he was getting a little big for them, he would not listen. So, we purchased the black ninja costume. The night of the school carnival he put it on and complained it was a little tight, not to mention the flood pants and three quarter length sleeves (it was a kids large), but he wore it anyway. Then the night of the church activity he wouldn't put it on. He said it was going up his rear and we wasn't dressing up this year. I tried to help him come up with a last minute costume and he declined every suggestion I made. Twenty minutes later he came out in his swim parka, goggles, and flip flops and said he was going as a swimmer. I think next year he might listen to mom.

          Mia of course was Cinderella. Not really a choice. She still has to wear all of Isabel's hand me down's. Luckily she loves to be a girlie girl. While I did her hair Halloween night, I sang to her that she was so pretty. She looks at me through the mirror and with a completely serious face says, "Why didn't you say gorgeous?" Ryan and I busted up laughing.

   As mentioned before Ryan had to go to Florida the Sunday before Halloween and was going to be gone until late Halloween night. I was so sad, I didn't want him to miss our first Halloween in Visalia. The night before Halloween my sweet husband found out they were going to be done working early, he woke up at three in the morning to find out if he could get on an earlier flight, then left Florida at five in the morning to make it home in time to spend Halloween with us. The kids were cheering when I told them. I love that man.

       We spent the evening with our neighbors eating pizza and trick or treating. Visalia was so fun. There were kids every where on the streets, most of the neighbors handed out candy, families were spending time together, and it was perfect weather. I felt like we were on a TV show where everything is just picture perfect.