Halloween 2018

October 31, 2018 by

Happy Halloween 2018!

Halloween 2013:

A classic from 2013. Amelia is the unhappy one.

2013, 2014, 2015:

2015:

The infamous fairy pout faces of 2016:

2017:

One year later!

2017:

2018:

Choosing our Halloween costumes is always an ordeal. There’s a sweet spot on choosing costume timing in which Halloween is close enough that the girls can’t change their minds a million times, but far enough away that there’s still time to look for a cheap costume or borrow one from someone else. When asked what they wanted to be, the twins said they wanted to dress up as the same thing as last year, which would have been fine, but I gave them a few magazines and pre-selected photos from Pinterest I printed out to give them some more ideas anyway. Sadly, they did not choose the 50s family theme I was hoping for! I thought they would all look adorable in poodle skirts, but alas, I think the family themed costumes are a thing of the past for us! At least Eleanor didn’t have a choice, and was forced to wear her baby poodle skirt to our school’s Grease-themed annual dinner.

Someone in our neighborhood was selling a beautiful Chasing Fireflies peacock costume, so even though that wasn’t Samantha’s original choice, once she saw it, she said yes! One down, three to go.

Eleanor had two costumes– one was a 50s baby costume complete with poodle skirt, which matched mine and Jake’s. We doubled up our Halloween costumes to go with the theme of the school’s annual dinner, Grease, to get some more use out of them. I was fully intending on having Eleanor wear her poodle skirt for Halloween as well, until I saw this hilarious baby pineapple costume at Carter’s. She’s only a baby once, so pineapple it was.

Amelia saw an angel costume she fell in love with. But two weeks before Halloween, as soon as she saw Meredith in her ladybug costume, she proclaimed she didn’t want to be an angel anymore, and wanted to match Meredith. Exasperated, I suggested a bumblebee, and told her that was fine if she wanted to switch, but that the money for the additional costume was coming out of her own money! She agreed to the deal and thus, she became a bumblebee.

Grammy came to town and with her help, we carved our pumpkins the day before Halloween.

Eleanor was bored.

Having Grammy around made getting ready a lot more manageable. After school, the girls changed into their costumes, we did hair and makeup and got ready to go to our neighborhood block party/potluck, while Grammy stayed home with napping Eleanor.

We filled up on chili, taquitos, snacks and hot dogs and admired our neighbors’ cute costumes.

I had too much fun pressing “bounce” on my phone.

When Eleanor woke up, we forced the girls to take more pictures before heading out for trick-or-treating.

   

     

I think Jake took his character a little too seriously.

Our town becomes one loud, giant party on Halloween, with tons of kids and parents out on the streets, making it so fun and festive. We were even named California’s best town in which to trick-or-treat! 

Meredith had no fear and caught on to the trick-or-treating concept pretty quickly. She had no qualms about entering people’s houses for a look around, either. The twins have always been sufficiently scared of random people that I’ve never been worried about them talking to strangers, but Meredith is another story. She’s a little too friendly!

I love seeing our neighbors’ costumes, so I took a turn answering the door and handing out candy, while the girls, Jake and my mom trick-or-treated with some of the neighborhood kids around our block and then my mom traded with me so that I could go out with the girls. It was the best of both worlds!

Baby Pineapple thought everyone being out so late and in such strange costumes was highly entertaining, until she became glassy-eyed and sleepy from all the excitement. Jake took her home to go to bed while the girls and I ran around to more neighborhoods.

Our town does a Haunted House/House Decorating contest each year and puts out a map so you can find all of them. The girls are still a little young for most of the scary ones, but we did check out our neighbor’s haunted house up the street that they do every year. Last year they had evil clowns with chain saws, and had the same this year.

As we approached, we saw a pack of tween boys screaming and running for their lives as an evil cackle and revvvvvv of a chainsaw echoed in the background. I asked the girls if they wanted to get candy from the house, and they were all gung- ho about it, walking nonchalantly passed the evil clowns and taking their candy. I overheard one of the clowns laughing to another clown, “Did you see those little girls!? They just walked right past me like it was nothing!”

While trick-or-treating, I told the girls they could eat two candies, but I’m pretty sure Meredith snuck in about ten. She was so wired! And so began a month of the girls sorting their candy and picking one out each day for a treat until I got so sick of it that I told the girls I had given their candy away to kids who didn’t get any candy, after which they cried for a day.

Lots of love,

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Halloween 2017

October 31, 2017 by

After a VERY long month, it was finally actual Halloween! We were definitely ready for it to be over.

Last year:

Girls’ costumes of years past:

Family costumes of years past:

Meredith stayed in her full costume for about five seconds before discarding it for the night. There was something about that hood that drove her crazy.

Samantha and Amelia’s choice of costume evolved several times throughout the months prior. At first, they were set on being fairies again like last year. Then, after a friend handed down a really pretty butterfly costume from one of her kids, the girls decided they’d rather both be butterflies. I told them they could only re-decide one more time, and their final choice was a cat and a mouse costume. I’m sure they would have chosen something else last minute if they had the choice, but I put my foot down.

Samantha the sneaky mouse.

Amelia the silly cat.

Meredith the cute owl!

GET OUT OF MY BUBBLE.

Doing their best animal interpretations.

Ever since the girls started choosing their own costumes, I’ve given up on coordinating a family costume. Jake and I decided to be Harry Potter wizards, and figured Meredith could be our Hedwig. Somehow, with two wizards and three animals, it all worked out!

  

Our new neighborhood so far has been awesome, with several families taking the lead on organizing get-togethers and events. During the summer, there was a huge 4th of July neighborhood block party with a rented blow-up waterslide, movie nights at the pocket park with someone’s inflatable movie screen, a cornhole tournament with a taco cart, and random potlucks and parties. Many weekends, neighborhood kids and dads (I’m assuming there’s never any moms out on the weekend because, like me, they delegate the weekend for daddy-kid time while they get stuff done or just relax!) will be out at the pocket park playing soccer or just hanging out, so the girls will go across the street and play. On Halloween, someone organized a potluck before we all went out trick-or-treating. It was fun to see all the neighborhood kids dressed up and playing together!

After the neighborhood potluck, it was time to hit the streets. Since this was our first time trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, we tagged along with our next-door neighbors so they could show us their route.

Once Meredith was shown how to ring a doorbell and say trick-or-treat, she never looked back. We’d have to go pull her out of some people’s houses because she’d just let herself right in! She was in heaven with all those people handing her candy!

There were several spooky “haunted houses,” one of which featured their teenagers dressed up like zombies and walking creepily around their front yard as kids approached. One had a creepy clown who dragged around a shovel, pacing the driveway, until a group of older kids showed up, at which point he pretended to chase them with his shovel, while they ran away screaming. Fortunately, the girls weren’t scared and just laughed, but some of the houses were a little too creepy for me!

Meredith fell asleep at one point and then perked back up 15 minutes later. She looked like a zombie herself!

Trick-or-treating in our old neighborhood was hard to beat with little kids. The houses there were a lot closer together, making it so we could hit up the entire block in no time. Here, we only did our street and the street over and it still took us a few hours. Many people were trick-or-treating themselves, so it seemed like a lot of people weren’t home, but even though the girls didn’t get as much candy as last year, they didn’t seem to mind. In fact, they were allowed to have one piece that night (Meredith probably ate way more than that because she was sneaky about it) and could pick one piece to eat per day after that, but after day three, they lost interest and I threw all of it out when they were at school. About two weeks later, Amelia asked, “Hey! Where’s my candy?” When I told her I had given it to kids who didn’t have any candy, she was so upset!

Showing off their spoils.

Happy Halloween 2017!

Lots of love,

 

 

 

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Fairies and Tinkerbell: Meredith’s First Halloween

November 13, 2016 by

Halloween is over. Can I get an, “Amen”?

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This year, the girls decided early on that they wanted to be fairies for Halloween after Aunt Annie handed down some cute fairy costumes her twins wore for a fairy birthday party one time. I stashed the costumes away for a few months so that when Halloween rolled around, the girls wouldn’t be sick of them. My tactics worked. I dug around my craft supplies to make their fairy crowns, hot glued fake moss and butterflies onto some old shoes they barely fit in anymore and found a YouTube Fairy Princess makeup tutorial… voila! Fairies!

After the girls decided to be fairies, I planned on Meredith being Tinkerbell and lucked out since my friend had a Tinkerbell costume which fit Meredith perfectly. I couldn’t resist picking up some Tinkerbell fairy shoes at the Disney Store, which was my one splurge. The little pom poms and jingle when you shook the shoes kept Meredith occupied, and regardless, I loved them! While I happily put the rest of our Halloween decor and costumes away in storage on November 1, Meredith’s Tinkerbell shoes on her dresser remain the lone vestige from Halloween.

I had originally planned on a Peter Pan theme, and a Tiger Lily costume for myself, but decided I had to be standing right next to Jake and Meredith or else my costume didn’t fit in, especially with the twins (thanks to the girls’ preschool party which served as kind of a dress rehearsal for helping me figure that out!) So, last minute, I dug out whatever green clothes I already had, got some green tights and wings, made myself a flower crown and transformed into a woodland fairy. I wish I had thought of doing a Midsummer Night’s Dream theme earlier on… I would have paid money to see Jake in a Puck costume.

For Peter Pan, thank you, Amazon, for the hat and tights… fortunately, he agreed to wear them.

The grump face in blue is Samantha and the one with the five-foot pout in pink is Amelia.

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Family costumes in prior years:

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This was the first year the girls picked out their own costumes and they proudly told anyone who would listen what they were going to be all month. Meredith, of course, didn’t have a choice, but loved her shoes and wings. She made the most squeezable Tink! I have to say, however; my favorite costumes so far have been the year Grammy made them Madeline costumes.

2014:

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2013-2016: picmonkey-collage3

Meredith 2015 and 2016:

picmonkey-collage5 The twins were so excited for Halloween all month, so much so, that the month seemed to drag by and I got sick of hearing, “Is it time to go trick or treating yet?” While the girls had fun on their Halloween field trip, they kept asking when it was time to get in their costumes and trick or treat, to the point that I had to threaten not going trick or treating that night if they asked again.

Although we had picked out pumpkins weeks before, we Jake didn’t carve them until the day of. After browsing Google Images, Samantha picked out a cat and Amelia picked out a creepy two-faced ghoul. To each their own.

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After pumpkin carving and scrounging for dinner (our pizza order ended up being 2.5 hours late and we were starving!), it was finally time.

But wait… first pictures! The twins were not pleased and alternated between humoring me and doing the ultimate pout faces. Despite my last-minute hot glue touch-ups, the moss just did not want to stay put on their fairy shoes as the girls were running around. Oh well. From far away it still looked cool!

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Pan and Tink.

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Please just humor me.

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At least Meredith is almost always game for pictures.

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“All the world needs is a little faith, trust and pixie dust.” -Tinkerbell

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Fly away, Tink!

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Two grumpy fairies and a happy Tink.

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SERIOUSLY, THERE’S NOT GOING TO BE ANY CANDY LEFT AT THIS POINT IF YOU DON’T STOP TAKING PICTURES.

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Glow sticks!

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Our neighbors set up a throw the spider on the sticky web game the twins loved and then it was time to hit the streets. Our neighborhood is full of little kids and young families, which makes staying local for trick or treating all the more fun. we met up with our friends and caravanned around the neighborhood with them, mostly hitting up the houses that had the non-scary decor. Some houses went all out and were a little too PG-13 for the kids, complete with electric chairs, screaming sounds, and chain saws. We stuck with the blow-up frankensteins and smiling ghosts.

It’s normally warm, if not downright scorching with Santa Ana winds to boot, this time of year, and I usually plan the girls’ costumes accordingly. This was the one year it was actually a tad chilly outside, and the girls wanted to wear sweaters, effectively covering up their costumes. Oh well.

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After an hour, the twins were winding down and Amelia kept tripping, spilling her candy all over the sidewalk every time. Meredith had been camped out in the Ergo during trick or treating, and while she was excited by all the sights and sounds at first, her eyes were glazed over by the end of the night. Time to head home. The twins chose a piece of candy to eat on the walk home and we barely had time to wipe off their makeup before they conked out, an hour past bedtime.

Unlike last year, the candy fairy did not make an appearance. In an effort to let loose, I let the twins choose one piece of candy each afternoon to eat, which had the unforeseen, but happy consequence of them keeping busy every day dumping out all their candy, asking what each one was and comparing their loot with each other. Pretty soon, they’ll be trading, I’m sure. After three days of being excited to choose a candy, they completely forgot about the whole thing and never brought it up again.

Addison, Jadyn, Samantha, Amelia and the lone boy, Nate.

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I was proud to overhear the twins talking while choosing which candy to eat one day and heard Amelia inform Samantha that, “Candy doesn’t have vitamins and we only eat it on holidays and special times.” Brainwashing at its finest!

Lots of love,

 

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Samantha and Amelia’s First Field Trip

November 13, 2016 by

On Halloween, Samantha and Amelia had the most exciting adventure of their lives… a ride on a REAL school bus. Oh, and a field trip to Irvine Regional Park. But that was just an afterthought in the minds of the twins. Instead of going anywhere, we should have just driven around town on the school bus with all of the kids, and they would have been perfectly happy!

I helped chaperone the field trip, and was assigned to Samantha and Amelia. What a coincidence!

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What? School buses have seat belts now? Not in my day.

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When I was teaching, most of my fellow teachers (myself included) viewed field trips with a sense of dread. It’s fun to do something different, but there’s also a lot of organization and work involved to keep everyone together and safe. I was always stressed out planning field trips! It was nice to follow someone else’s direction for a change and the Irvine Regional Park people had an organized agenda for us, making our jobs easier. Still, rounding up 50+ preschoolers and herding them through the park was no easy task.

First up: the train. All the kids were shouting things like, “Look! A peacock!” and “Look! A squirrel!” Owen chimed in, “Look! A bathroom!”

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Little skeletons.

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We also took the kids through the haunted house, through the corn maze and let them run around and stick their heads through the spooky cutouts. Amelia and Samantha kept begging to go in the bounce house and play the carnival games (I swear, they are addicted), but since that wasn’t on the agenda, we had to skip it. They didn’t really understand the whole field trip concept and kept asking when we were going back to school and if we were ever going home! You’d think they would just be happy to be there, but Samantha and Amelia typically feel ill at ease unless they know exactly what’s going on.

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I guess we should have waited to buy our pumpkins this year because they let the kids pick some out for free that day.

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What kid isn’t excited to eat their sack lunch on a field trip?

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After lunch, we unleashed the torrent of kids onto the playground and the parents joked that we should have just walked to the park across the street from school instead of paying to come here. They would have been just as happy; although, the bus ride definitely put it over the top!

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Meanwhile, Meredith was enjoying Take Your Daughter to Work Day at the firm. Jake’s paralegals and the other attorneys had a great time with Meredith (and probably got absolutely nothing done that morning!)

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Lots of love,

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