A Brooklyn Halloween

As you can see, blogging has not been on my list of things to do for quite some time. And in all honesty, it still really isn't very high on my list of things to do. But this year's Halloween was too cute not to document.

Halloween festivities began the Saturday before Halloween. Our ward had its annual Harvest Festival and two superheroes flew in just in time to make an appearance.

Super Blake

Super Powers:

-throwing lightning bolts

-ability to fly

-endless appetite

-endless energy

Kryptonite:

-bedtime

Super Trevor

Super Powers:

-ability to fly

-ear-piercing screech

-super-human drool

Kryptonite:

-diaper rash

-teething

Not pictured: Super Mom

Super Powers: functioning on no sleep, making t-shirt capes, super-human strength (as evidenced by hauling a stroller up and down subway steps)

Kryptonite: chocolate

On October 1st, I made the mistake of telling Blake that Halloween was this month. He was pretty disappointed when he woke up every morning only to find out it wasn't Halloween yet. Finally October 31st arrived and our day was filled with tons of Halloween fun!

Preschool Party:

Trick-or-Treating:

We walked home with enough to candy to last us a few weeks. 

And the boys were asleep by 8pm. Perfect ending to a great Halloween!

Halloween and a Hurricane

Well, I guess it was really the hurricane first, then Halloween.

Our neighborhood  had a few fallen trees after Sandy hit, but we came out of it relatively unscathed. And while I wasn't really scared during the storm, it was the strongest wind I've ever heard. I can't imagine how frightening it was for people to watch rising flood waters invade their homes!

Fireman Sam is here to check things out.

Heading out to check on the nabe.

We didn't lose power or internet, so being cooped up for a week wasn't horrible. The worst thing that happened to us was losing cell phone service for a few days. I didn't really think it was a big deal until I started going through a scenario where I went into labor but didn't have the ability to call anyone to take Blake or get a ride to the hospital. Luckily that didn't happen.

With Hurricane Sandy hitting the week of Halloween, no one knew if trick-or-treating was actually going to happen. This would've been Blake's first experience with trick-or-treating so if it had been cancelled he wouldn't have known the difference. Luckily for Blake (and me, since I've been snacking on his candy) trick-or-treating was on, so we headed out with friends to collect some loot.

Come on, guys!

Trick-or-treating in Brooklyn is a lot different than trick-or-treating in the 'burbs. Instead of going house to house you go store to store collecting your candy. Blake seemed pretty confused about the whole process. All I could think about was the line from Jerry Seinfeld's bit, "What is this? Who’s giving out candy? Someone’s giving out candy? Who is giving out this candy? Everyone we know is just giving out candy?!" Blake couldn't process that people were just giving him candy, and lots of it!

The funniest part of trick-or-treating was when a confused Blake followed the crowd of trick-or-treaters into a pizza place and held his bucket up to a patron waiting in line and said, "Trick or treat!" to which the guy responded, "Sorry man. I don't have any candy!"

After a few blocks (it doesn't take much to fill up your bucket!) we called it a day and headed back home.

CAAAAAAAAAAAANDY!

Despite Hurricane Sandy, Halloween was a lot of fun this year. Can't believe next Halloween we'll have a 3 year old and an almost 1 year old!

Pumpkin Carving in the City

One of my most favorite memories of fall is carving pumpkins for Halloween. Deciding what type of scary face I'm going to give my jack-o-lantern, carving it, sticking a candle in the pumpkin, and then realizing it doesn't look nearly as good as I thought it was going to. Great memories!

For some reason, though, I never remember the preparing of the pumpkin to carve until I actually start the process. Then I remember that it's kind of disgusting and by the time all the pumpkin guts are cleaned out I'm not really interested in having anything to do with a pumpkin for the rest of my life.

Up until this year I've had a hard time finding a place within walking distance that sold pumpkins. But Evan came back from the store one night and told me they had some small-ish ones for way too much money in case I was interested. Luckily I had already devised a plan for a guts-free-pumpkin-carving Halloween this year.

The first thing I do when I go to Target is look at their dollar section. I generally load up on a few things that I don't need and then end up putting most of it back before I get to my actual shopping list. But, I saw a Styrofoam pumpkin and thought it would be cute to put outside our door. I talked myself out of it until I found this:

And in the dollar section of the Atlantic Terminal Target I had an epiphany: this year we will carve a pumpkin...city style! Well, city/mom is 8 months pregnant/Blake is going to lose interest in carving a pumpkin in 2.34 minutes/we don't have a porch to display this pumpkin style. So I grabbed the Styrofoam pumpkin I had put back and I had myself a nice little craft project for Blake. No pumpkin guts required!

We ventured outside one morning to "carve" our pumpkin. Blake decorated and I snapped a few pictures. I was all set to display it outside our front door when Blake decided he wanted to carry the pumpkin around for the rest of the day. And put it in his room. And rearrange all the felt pieces.

Wait. We're just going to stick it outside our front door?

I tried putting the pumpkin outside our door after Blake went to bed, but the next morning he saw it on our way outside and couldn't resist bringing it in. I let him pick out one of those tiny decorative pumpkins at the store hoping to draw his attention away from the fake pumpkin. Now he's enamored with both.

I like both of the little pumpkins that I keep finding in random places in our apartment. And while I kind of miss roasting pumpkin seeds to snack on, I certainly didn't miss touching the insides of a pumpkin this year.

Happy Halloween!

I was really excited for Blake's Halloween costume this year. I came up with it all on my own AND it was super easy to create!

Unfortunately, the stickers that were supposed to stick so well to Blake's shirt didn't stick well at all. And when I tried to secure them with tape, it made them even more enticing to mess with.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that I didn't get any pictures of Blake in his costume (or any of me in mine) during our ward "Harvest Party", which is the only time we will be wearing our costumes*. So for the sake of memories, I recreated Blake's costume. And I digitally recreated mine.

 You can be impressed with my MS paint skills.

Can you figure out what we are? (Check the comments for the answer!)

*You may be wondering why we only wore our costumes to our ward Halloween Party Harvest Party and not to go trick-or-treating. It's because we aren't going trick-or-treating. There are several reasons for this and all of them do a great job of taking the wind out of Halloween's sails:

1- Blake is 19 months old and while I'm sure he'd love to get a bag full of candy, as the mother of this 19 month old I am not keen on him consuming a bag full of candy.

2- If Blake isn't going to eat the candy then guess who will: me. As evidenced by the picture of me in this post, the last thing I need is a bag full of candy.

3- If we knew a lot of our neighbors or knew a group of people who were going trick-or-treating then I'd probably be up for tagging along. But we don't. So we aren't.

4- Blake won't remember hanging out at home on his second Halloween, so I don't feel too bad about not going.

THIS is what he should have been for Halloween...

A gummy bear!

Happy Halloween!

Love,

The Lumberjack family