Halloween parties and parade

Yesterday was a wild day with class parties and our town's Halloween parade.



It is next to impossible for me to attend both kids' classroom parties. Our district breaks the schools into K-2, 3-5 and 6-8 grades. As my kids are 4 years apart in ages, they won't be together in the same building until high school. And, by then, I suspect they won't really want me around.



This year, I did manage to partially hit both parties. Elise's school does a parade from their school to the district offices and back. It's just under a 2 mile round trip walk and the entire school of 450 students dresses up in their costumes for the walk. We got lucky this year as it was 70 degrees and sunny. (I've done the walk in some pretty crappy weather!)





There's the princess with some of her classmates.





It's really quite a sight to see that many kids. I'm standing at the turnaround point and if you look carefully, you can see the sidewalks on both sides of the street are full of kids for as far as you can see!





And it's a great opportunity to get a class picture. (Elise is off to the side because she was upset about getting a sweet gum ball from the tree stuck in the tulle of her dress!)



After the parade, the classroom party begins and that is where I sprinted over to Carson's school to hit the tail end of his party.



Carson with a friend and his teacher. I think you could have easily combined the boys' costumes!





Carson's class played pictionary. The other moms and I weren't quite sure where Carson was going with this drawing! Turns out it was a candy apple. One girl drew what I thought looked like an ovary, but turned out to be a makeup container (?!?). I'm not sure who had more fun...the kids or the moms trying to figure out the drawings.

To cap off the day, we headed out to the town's annual Halloween parade. My folks even came over to join us. It's an evening parade, which is always fun and the kids get TONS of candy. Both Carson and Elise found friends in the same spot so it was a fun evening for all. It was a beautiful evening for a parade.

Between trick-or-treating and the parade, I think we're set for candy for about 2 years!

I declare it officially FALL!

Even though our temps are still hitting close to 70, I'm calling it fall. We went pumpkin picking (at Walmart!), carved the pumpkins and roasted the seeds. Yup, sure signs of fall. Now, if we could just get some sweater weather going, it'd be PERFECT!

Perry and the kids set the bar a little higher in their pumpkin designs this year. Because I have to share the pumpkin seeds with my greedy kids and husband, we did 4 pumpkins so there would be plenty of seeds to go around.

The two on the left are Elise's. She designed a kitty cat face and convinced her dad to carve a unicorn. Carson's are on the right. The odd face is a clone trooper (I'm sure that really needed no explanation).

I'm off to munch on some seeds...