Starey Stuff

A few weeks before Halloween, Sadie, Micah, and I stopped at Albertson's to pick up a few things, and there was this Bride of Frankenstein display at the front of the store. Her head was cut off, and she was holding it, and if you walked by her, she had this sensor thing, and her head would start talking to you, saying creepy stuff... I don't know. I didn't really pay close attention to what she was saying. But Sadie was like a deer in the headlights. She was glued to the floor, eyes wide with horror, unable to move or blink. I finally was able to snap her out of her reverie of terror, and she kept looking fretfully over her shoulder as we walked away. For the rest of the day, she kept talking about "that lady in the store." She kept saying, "Dat was starey stuff. Dat was starey stuff." ("Starey" = scary. It used to be "darey," but we have now progressed to "starey.")

Our neighbors, who are not my favorite people, are REALLY into Halloween:

They go all out. When they first put up this ghost-who-pops-in-and-out-of-a-pumpkin thingey, Sadie was freaking OUT:

She could not walk past it without an adult holding her, as I came to find out. She and Dylan were down the street at another friend's house, playing, and she decided to come home without Dylan. Our next-door neighbors had set up the pumpkin-with-ghost while she was down there, and when she saw that, she was frozen - couldn't walk past it on the sidewalk. So she's crying and screaming, "Mommy! Mommy!!" But I was showering, so I didn't hear her. I get out of the shower, and I see the friend's grandma carrying Sadie safely past the pumpkin and to our house.

Sadie's like her mommy. I hate "starey" stuff. I refuse - refuse - to watch scary movies. Ben was trying to talk me into watching The Ring on TV the other night, and I was like, "NO. You watch it. I'm going to bed." And then I walked the two feet to our bed (which is still in the living room), climbed in, put a pillow over my head, and went to sleep. We were watching Monster House last week, and Sadie wouldn't sit in the living room to watch it. She stood in the dining room and would peek her head in to watch for a minute. Then, when it got too "starey," she would back up into the dining room corner for awhile. She is really cute.

Our ward had a trunk-or-treat a few days before Halloween, but Dylan got a "bad stamp" on his school calendar that day - he was distracting the other kids while the teacher was trying to talk - so we didn't let him go to the trunk-or-treat. It's hard to punish him like that, but it is absolutely unacceptable for him to be disrespectful of his teacher. So Ben and Sadie went to the trunk-or-treat, and I got to listen to Dylan cry and howl and actually try to blame everyone for him not going - everyone but himself. I keep hoping that me continually repeating myself that his choices have consequences, good or bad, will someday sink in. Here's Sadie before the trunk-or-treat. She was "Ayo" [Ariel]. She was absolutely thrilled to be dressed as Ariel, and she loved her red-spray-painted hair:

My very generous Mommy got the kids' costumes this year. Love that woman.

A couple of days before Halloween, Dylan and I went and got some pumpkins at Wal-Mart. Never again. They ended up being those kinds that are like spaghetti squash inside. Impossible to gut or carve very well. And then one of them was totally petrified. Like a petrified pumpkin. I couldn't even get the knife to stab into it. So I replaced that one with a nice Albertson's pumpkin. My idea was to have five pumpkins, one for each of us, but Halloween was so freakin' busy this year that we only got three carved. Sigh. I was sad, because pumpkin carving is actually my favorite part of Halloween. Dylan drew his own face, and I carved it for him:

He decided that his pumpkin wasn't cool enough - he wanted "his" pumpkin to have a bat on it. But he wanted someone else to draw it and carve it. So Ben carved a bat for Dylan. It's on the right. He freehanded it, of course, the talented little twit:

But Dylan didn't LIKE that bat. We have one of those carving kits, and one of the pictures had three bats flying over a belfry. Dylan didn't want the belfry, but he wanted those three bats. So I carved it for him:

And then he was happy. Sheesh. Ben has been slowly throwing the carved pumpkins away, just whenever he thinks of it, and this one is the only one left on our porch. And our fat squirrel friend has eaten the two smaller bats. Only the big bat remains. :)

Dylan's Kindergarten teacher kills me. Two days before Halloween - two - she sends a note home, saying, "I want the kids to dress up in their zoophonics characters for Halloween, instead of their normal costumes." Zoophonics is this way to teach kids the alphabet - each letter has an animal that represents it. So usually, the dog is the zoophonics animal for the letter D. So I start trying to figure out how I'm going to throw together a dog costume. And then, the day before Halloween, I find out that there are too many "D" kids in Dylan's class, so he's not a dog. He's a deer. So I'm freaking out, trying to figure out how to make Dylan a deer. This is what I came up with:

Ben made antlers out of pipe cleaners, and since we didn't have any tan pipe cleaners and we had to use, like, green and red and black pipe cleaners, I wrapped them with paper. I should have then spray-painted them, but I didn't have time. It was Ben's really good idea to tuck the antlers into his hunting hat. There are these perfect straps around the hat that held the antlers into place. And then I went to Wally's and got him a brown shirt and brown pants. And then I got some of that fake fur fabric stuff and made a tail and the fur on his belly. I had him put my black socks on his hands to make hooves. I literally was working on this costume until the second Dylan got onto his bus. It was a crazy morning. A little more notice might have been nice, Miss Vos!! I wasn't supposed to paint his face, because he had made a deer mask the day before in Kindergarten, and they were going to use that. The mask ended up being really gay-looking:

And it didn't work with the hat. Dylan said he just didn't wear his mask. And when he got home, the antlers were drooping. :)

He was so crazy about his deer outfit that I had to work really hard to talk him into wearing the costume my mom got him for trick-or-treating that night. I finally talked him into it:

He was Bumblebee of the Transformers. Thoes things he's swinging around are supposed to tie around his waist, but he wanted them to be "whips." So whatever. What did I dress Micah up in, you ask? As a cute baby:

Here's Ben, wearing Sadie's trick-or-treat bag on his head. He's always doing stuff like this:

Per our usual Halloween tradition, after Dylan, Sadie, and Ben got sick of trick-or-treating (Dylan was ready to quit after, like, the first block. He is so lazy!!!), we all went out to my parents' to show them their costumes. The Nat Pack came over, as well. Jake came strutting in the front door in his Ironman costume:

It was pretty sweet - it had built-in muscles and everything. And he insisted on wearing his Power Rangers gloves to complete his outfit. I love his little pose. He's got it down pat. We just rented Ironman for the first time this weekend, and it's pretty sweet - I can see the draw for Jakey.

Here's Brock, who was a dog:

And Troy, who was a scarecrow. He had a sweet hat to go with it, but he wasn't wearing it that night:

Nat got the cutest picture of Micah and Ivy, who are two weeks apart in age. Ivy kept grabbing Micah's shirt - she loves to suck on fabric:

They are the two cutest babies ever!!!

I got a cute shot of Dad, playing "Rough N Tuff" with the boys. I used to love playing Rough N Tuff with him when I was little:

And a cute pic of Dad with Micah - Dad has the Magic Touch with babies. They love him: