For the last few years we have gotten our pumpkins from some of Ben's extended family. It's so nice... the pumpkins are beautiful, and they don't cost us a thing! So we picked out our pumpkins at the beginning of October and got the kids to wait until the 20th before carving them. They looked pretty sad by Halloween, but the boys didn't care.
For family night, we dragged in the picnic table into the garage and got to work. For Xander's birthday he wanted and got a pumpkin carving kit, so Landon and Xander followed patterns from the kit... Landon chose a bat in a window and Xander chose a pirate cat. Gavin chose to do a face, and for the most part he actually did almost all the carving by himself. He worked really hard and the faces he made while concentrating were too funny. Xander did a good job on his but needed some help with the smaller details. I ended up carving Landon's because he was content to just watch me do the work.
When we finished, we took them out to the porch (yeah for now having a porch to put them on!) to light them and take pictures. For the life of me I couldn't get those boys to cooperate all at the same time... oh well. Tanner was so fascinated with the pumpkins and the candlelight inside. I have loved watching him get so excited every time he sees the pumpkins. He calls them balls (as are almost all round objects right now). Being able to see the wonder the world holds through their eyes is one of the little gifts of motherhood I love.
I make my the boys costumes almost every year. One because it's a great excuse to be creative and "have" to get it done because there is a timeline. And two I can't afford to buy each of them a costume... just not in the budget. So after much mind changing, we finally settled on super heroes. Each of them chose which super hero they wanted to be (Tanner being the exception). Gavin was Batman, Xander was Wolverine, Landon was Flash, and Tanner was Spiderman. I find the idea of making super here tunics here. They were no sew, and I want these to last a while, so I just went to Google images and looked up ideas for each super hero and did my own thing. Then for the masks I did use this woman's patterns she has on her blog here... though I took just her basic shaped mask and created my own Flash mask from it since he wasn't one of the options. They were fun to make and came together pretty quickly and easily. And the boys loved them!
I made Ben participate this year too. He already had a Superman shirt, so I just made him a cape. He was so thrilled to know he had a cape! Hehehe He was a good sport. And for me I decided to do the Wonder Woman logo and then add a little maternity flair to it. I saw this shirt and thought it was cute, but wanted to stay with the super hero theme. So I found a pattern for the baby skeleton here, and then adapted it to suit my needs. I thought it turned out pretty cute. It was fun to watch people's face when they noticed the shirt. Though I don't think as many recognized Wonder Woman's logo as the other ones.
We wandered our neighborhood for a good hour or two in the beautiful fall weather and had a good time trick or treating. Gavin had to be sure to tell everyone that he was Batman, and usually who all his brothers were. He also says he's going to be Batman again next year.
The boys came home with a load of loot! And it was good stuff too... at least half was chocolate and the rest was good non-chocolate stuff. Tanner was so excited he tried to eat through several wrappers and may have succeed once or twice. We let the boys choose 5 candies, and then sat down to enjoy "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" to finish off the night. What a fun evening spent as a family!
