Halloween (Yes, I'm blogging about Halloween in May)

Now it's time to get caught up on the last several months of laziness.

It is crazy to me how Halloween has become such a huge commercialized holiday.  It has never been one of my favorites, but every holiday is more fun with children and Halloween is no exception.

We passed the Johnson Brother's pumpkin patch everyday on the way to Isaac's school, so it was more of a question of "when" we were going than "if."  We invited some friends to come with us and had a fun night letting the boys run everywhere and play.  It was a week night so it wasn't too crowded, which was nice.

We checked in with the "How Tall This Fall" scarecrow to see how the boys were measuring up this year.

Isaac's favorite thing was the Haunted House, which was actually just a haunted hallway, but I guess that's good enough when you're 5.  I think he would have spent all night running through that hallway if we would have let him.  Isaac would take Luke's hand and lead him through too, which was cute since he is not usually very interested in his little brother's company.

Next stop was the petting zoo.  Luke was a little timid around the goats, but liked watching them from the safety of Mom or Dad's arms.  Isaac on the other hand was smiling ear to ear and giggling as the goats gobbled piles of food from his hands.

Last year Isaac's favorite thing was the pony ride, so we were sure he would want to ride again.  But for some reason he was acting weird and insisted on sitting on a bale of hay to watch while Luke rode instead.  Luke loved it!

We bounced in the bounce houses and rode in all of the mechanical vehicles.  The kids climbed and played on the fort made from hay bales.  Isaac went crazy swinging his fists at the giant hay filled punching bags.

Don't let Luke's cute innocent face in this picture fool you.

Any pumpkin that was light enough for him to lift was also immediately thrown.  All night he kept saying "ball, ball, ball!" and chucking every little pumpkin he could get his hands on.

At the end of the night we picked out a small pumpkin to purchase for Isaac.  We'd already bought some larger ones from the grocery store, but as you can see, Isaac wasn't too happy about this.  Mr. Grumpster.

The next Halloween activity was pumpkin decorating.  Isaac's class has share day every Friday at school and the assignment for the week was to bring a pumpkin that they decorated.  Isaac and I had several conversations about the pumpkin and how we should decorate it.  We finally decided to make a Robot pumpkin from Isaac's favorite TV show, Robot & Monster on Nickelodeon.  He was soooo excited about this idea and got really into it.  We went to Lowe's and got some miscellaneous hardware pieces to use for his hands and some orange spray paint.  We picked up craft paint at Michael's for his eyes & letter "R."  We gave him some random wheels that we had laying around and used a pipe cleaner for his antenna.  His arms were made from little plastic cups glued together at an angle & spray painted orange.

Isaac loved, loved, LOVED his pumpkin and was so proud of it.  He wanted to show everyone that came to our house.  He kept it on his dresser for weeks after Halloween until it started getting moldy where we had drilled his wheels in.

Moving on.  A few days before Halloween was the big Trunk or Treat at church.  Charlie was out of town so it was just me & the boys.  It was their first time to get all dressed up in their costumes.  I don't think Luke really had any clue what was going on or what he was supposed to be, but he did like wearing a hat.  He loves hats.  And Isaac, of course, was most excited about his helmet.  Here are my little Trunk or Treaters all dressed up and ready to go.

This is Isaac and his friend Hudson.  They were born just a few weeks apart and have grown up together.

It was Luke's first time trick-or-treating.  He caught on really quickly to what he was supposed to be doing.  He couldn't quite say the words but he won the candy passer-outers over with his cute smile and his little outstretched hand.  I'm not sure Luke even realized he was filling his bucket with candy, but he sure did like dropping each piece into his pumpkin bucket.

Once we were back at home Luke figured it all out really quickly.  He couldn't eat that candy fast enough!  I eventually had to hide the buckets because even when they were way up on the kitchen counter, he kept pointing and begging for more.  Luke has much more of a sweet tooth than Isaac ever did.  But don't get me wrong, Isaac ate his fair share of treats that night too.

The day before Halloween Isaac had a costume parade at school.  Luke and I got to go watch.  Well I watched and Luke climbed around on the playground, rode tricycles, and threw balls.  There were some other astronauts in the parade, but Isaac was the only one with the cool helmet.

Isaac & Luke also got Halloween cards in the mail from their grandparents.

And finally the big night arrived.  We had to get a good picture of our space crew before sending them out on their mission.  It is always a challenge getting even one of these three to look at the camera let alone all three of them!  But here they are - the Wood brother astronauts and their trusty space shuttle dog Cracker.

When Isaac decided that he wanted to be an astronaut I was a little stumped at first about how to dress Cracker.  They have always had matching costumes and I couldn't let this year be any different.  Finally Mikael gave me the idea of dressing Cracker as a space shuttle.  I googled it and found another shuttle dog to base his costume off of.  The costume was time consuming, but not necessarily difficult to make.  We really only needed it for a few good pictures.

Cracker was a good sport.

After pictures we set out trick or treating.  Isaac is always more interested in everyone's decorations than in the candy.  We just went up and down one street and called it a night, and everyone was happy.  Until next year, Happy Halloween!