halloween fun

Halloween this year, was kind of busy. The boys still had karate to go to. Then we had to hurry out to Cody's baptism in Glendora. After that, we hung out at Cody's house for banana split sundaes. Then headed off to Grandma and Grandpa McAlister's house to have dinner and go trick-or-treating.

It was a busy day, but a good and fun day.

Here you can see Grandma putting faces on the "mummy dogs" for dinner.


We brought our GFCF corn dogs for the boys. They still made good "mummy dogs".

We're all dressed up and ready to go! The kids had their first "theme" set of costumes. Duncan and Liam REALLY wanted to be Mario and Luigi, and they all thought that Jennan should be Peach and Tegan should be Yoshi. Luckily for us, there was a green and yellow dinosaur costume that fit Tegan in our Halloween boxes, and the kids accepted that costume as Yoshi. I'm not sure if we already had Jennan's Princess costume already or if Anna bought it this year, but it was a good Peach costume.

Trick-or-treating went really well this year. No one did any complaining till much later in the evening. Even Tegan was quite eager to trick-or-treat and keep up for much longer than expected.

We trick-or-treated with Josh and Sara's family again this year, as well as an old friend of Sara's family. Brenna (sp?) was a peacock (and made sure every person who answered their door knew it). She's probably 5-6 years old. They also have a baby boy who spent most of the time in the stroller.

This house was cool. It had two red spot lights with Halloween scrims, and ghost lanterns in the yard.

Here's Anna and I in our costumes. Anna wore that outfit at school on Friday as well. One student said she looked like Ozzy Ozbourne. I'd like to thank the vertical stripes on the ref. shirt for their slimming effect. Though next time I may have to wear platform shoes.

It may have been kind of hectic at times, but Halloween was a fun day. At one point though, Anna and I got a chance to just sit and chill for a moment while we were at Neil and Cyndi's house before we headed out to Pasadena. It was a nice mini break. The kids were great all day. TONS of candy. And we finished it all off with free blackjack tacos from Taco Bell.

SIDE STRORY: Blackjack Tacos

While in Pasadena, I had a quick chance to run out and get a Tommy's burger and a free Blackjack taco from Taco Bell. They were giving them away from 6pm to midnight. Anna had a bite of it, and I ate the rest. It was good. On the drive home, we realized we could probably still take advantage of the give away. There's a Taco Bell near us, so at about 1o:45pm, we pulled into the drive thru- inquired about the tacos- yes, they were still giving them away- I said there were 6 people in our van that would like to try one- pulled up to the window where a bag of taco's were presented to me- I said thank you, and we drove home. Awesome. (The kids were all asleep.) We put the kids to bed, unloaded the van, and sat down to some late night grub. Anna emptied her taco fillings onto a plate, I doubled up on taco shells, and we ate. The tacos were a little on the "piddle" side, but we didn't care. Food that is free is always good.

friday flashback 10.30.09

Happy Halloween Eve!

Can't pass a chance to put up another Halloween themed flashback picture. This one's going waaaay back...





Wow! I'm thinking it's about 1983? 84? Maybe 85?

Looks like I'm some sort of scary dead guy. Kyle's a ghost, and Kristi's a witch- those are pretty obvious. Kevin's could be lots of things- a red Zorro, an all red clown, a tomato, but he's none of those. He's a devil. That costume was around forever. Almost everyone had a turn wearing it. I believe my mom made it. It was nylon or something like that. Chances are, she probably made those witch and ghost costumes, too. Halloween was always a fun time.

When we were kids, the traditional Foutz dinner for Halloween was tater tots and taquitos. The reason being- they're both finger food. We would usually spend half the evening handing out candy as a family, doing our best to scarily answer the door for the trick-or-treaters, so we couldn't just sit down to dinner.

As for my young family, we're not usually home to fix up a nice crunchy batch of taquitos and tater tots. But for tradition's sake, I may have to make sure I eat some taquitos from somewhere while we're out tomorrow, to keep the tradition alive.

Have a safe and fun Halloween everyone.

some halloween stuff

Last week, Duncan really wanted to make a scarecrow. So I helped him find some pants and a shirt, and got him stuffing those with newspaper. I stapled the leg and hand holes shut to keep the paper in. Then we stapled the shirt to the pants. Next we stuffed a plastic grocery bag with newspaper and formed that into a head. Duncan drew a face, and we added a beany hat to finish him off.

Here's what it looked like.



Monday, when the boys got home from school, Anna dressed them in some costumes to wear while they did their homework. The costumes were in our Halloween storage boxes that we finally opened up that day. The hats didn't stay on long.

Last night we did our pumpkin carving. Here we are, all set up and ready to go. I thought there was a "middle" of our carving night, but nope, there's not.

Here are the finished jack-o-lanterns. The kids are standing behind the pumpkins they each designed. Again this year, we had them draw a face on the pumpkin and we helped them cut it out. It was a lot of fun.

This year, I made sure to save out most of the seeds, and toasted them. They're really good, but kind of hard/tricky to hull, so I'm not sure what I'll do with them other than put them in a bag and snack on them occasionally. I saw a recipe for making a pumpkin seed brittle, but you need 3 cups of hulled seeds for it. That would take me forever unless I figure out a quick and efficient way to hull the seeds.

So yeah, it's been a fun Halloween week. Monday, for family night, we baked cookies and decorated them to ding-dong-ditch deliver them to some of our ward friends. Tuesday the whole family went to mutual for a "spooky" dinner. Yesterday, pumpkins. Now I guess we better come up with something for the next couple nights to keep it going. Sounds like fun.

Here's Tegan singing "This is Halloween" from Nightmare Before Christmas.

friday flashback 10.23.09

This one only goes back a few years, but it's seasonally appropriate...

As you can see, it's Halloween 2006. We're in Pasadena at Grandma and Grandpa McAlister's house for tick-0r-treating in their neighborhood. We were with Josh and Sara's family that night as well.

Duncan is a fireman, Liam is "Bob the builder", and Jennan is a fairy. I'm pretty sure I wore my Charlie Brown shirt, and I don't recall Anna wearing a costume.

I remember that our kids got tired/bored after doing just one street. The next year, Duncan did a little more. Here's last year.

We'll see how it goes for them next week.

friday flashback 10.16.09

It's the middle of October, and Halloween is only two weeks away, so I thought I'd share a Halloween picture from the past...

That's Kevin and I dressed up to scare trick or treaters. This is from when we all lived at the compound. I'm guessing it's from 2002 or 2003. Maaaaaybe 2004, I can't really put my finger on it. I do know it was after I took that theatre makeup course at PCC though. My makeup skills were vastly improved.

I remember people thinking we were a haunted house group, and almost walking into mom and dad's house. The yard was all set up, and we had the fog machine out. I think this might have been the last year I did anything like this. I'm sure I'll do it again sometime in the future when the kids are a little older.

So yeah. Happy Friday.