The Burrus Family: Pre-Halloween Fun

Halloween was never my favorite holiday, until this year. Once everyone started putting out pumpkins and Halloween decorations, Charlie and Evie got super excited about Halloween and every drive through our neighborhood became thrilling. As soon as we got in the car, they would beg to "go see spookies!" Their favorite drive involved several large, blow-up "bad cats," and they would get extremely excited each time we saw one. I loved hearing Evie's low, growling "baaaad caaaat!" every time we drove past. The also loved all the pumpkins, ghosts, spider webs, and everything else--apparently, the spookier, the better for these two. Dreaming about trick or treating was so fun too. I think I probably answered 100+ questions about what trick or treating is, what it entails, why we do it, how we get candy, how much candy we get, what we say, what do the people at the houses say, etc., etc., etc. Very exciting stuff. :)

Here we are picking our Halloween pumpkins. As you can imagine, there were lots of strong opinions. After several rounds of negotiation, Clint and I escaped with "only" 5 pumpkins (one for each member of the family, including the baby :).

The other best part of the holiday was Charlie's Halloween costume. One of my favorite traits about Charlie--which he certainly did not inherit from me!--is his complete and utter decisiveness. Once he makes a decision, Charlie never wavers; he just remains perfectly happy with his choice. And once he decided to be a football player (more specifically, Johnny Football, although, as you will notice, there are some inconsistencies with his costume), he was just pumped about that decision. I thought some of his friends with super hero costumes might make him regret his choice, but he just thought he looked fabulous. He begged (still begs) to wear the costume every day, and just loves himself in it. Although I limited its wear to inside before Halloween, he now has free rein with it and Johnny Football has appeared in numerous different venues. :)

Here is Johnny Football and his cheerleader. Evie became quite adept at saying "Go Football!"

One fun event this year was a pumpkin carving party at our neighbors', the Zavalas', house. The kids mostly ran around and played, and once Clint learned that there was a pumpkin carving contest, we lost him for the duration of the party. :)

Still carving...not sure he spoke with anyone there. :)

Evie was more interested in the pizza and cookies than the pumpkins. Big surprise. :)

When I walked home, I was surprised to see Johnny relieving himself in our front yard. Better than wet football pants, I guess!

From there, we headed to the kids' school for trunk or treating. This was a big hit and up until we actually tried trick or treating, Charlie swore that trunk or treating was what he liked best (that all changed on Halloween night, however).

Charlie was so frustrated with me that night for not having ironed his #2 on his jersey yet. I think he asked me the first thing every morning if I had done it, but I had a hard time finding a time when it was clean but not being worn to do it!

Once Evie figured out everyone was handing out candy, she became much less trepidatious than normal. Makes me wonder if she's all that shy after all...

Johnny and the very very friendly cheerleader.

Miss Chocolate Face loved her candy!

We also had to do some pumpkin carving of our own, when the kids could pay attention. First, here is the final product from the party (Evie's "bad cat"):

Charlie and Evie were very good helpers, and loved cleaning out the pumpkin. They were so helpful that I ultimately had to take them up for a bath so Daddy could finish carving without worrying about someone grabbing the knife from him. :)

We came down after the bath to find Charlie's ghost pumpkin! He was so torn because he had badly wanted a spooky ghost, but he wasn't so sure about Evie having a bigger pumpkin.

Not 100% thrilled with his ghost.

A few days later, the kids and I got another shot at pumpkin decorating at the McDonough's pumpkin decorating party. I didn't try carving one on my own, but the kids had a blast playing, eating and painting pumpkins. Charlie was most pumped about the "black things under my eyes." He just loves looking at this photo. :)