Halloween 2022

Halloween fell on a Monday this year, and I was scheduled to teach on campus in the afternoon.  Luckily, I planned ahead and scheduled an exam for my students that day and was easily able to secure a sub to basically just sit there and administer/proctor the exam.  This allowed me to have the day off to prep food for the kids' classroom parties and also to attend the much-anticipated Halloween parade around town in the afternoon.  

Sam kept it simple this year in a Winnie the Pooh 'onesie' that she was gifted earlier in the Fall.  (This was likely the inspiration for her Eeyore pumpkin carving).

Sophia chose a comfortable and warm kangaroo 'onesie' online that I promptly ordered for her knowing that the weather was looking questionable (as usual) leading up to the holiday.

Jack chose a Deadpool Spiderman costume online and Jimmy borrowed his Transformer costume from a neighbor, which worked out great for me.

I wanted to grab a quick picture by the woods to show that the leaves were just starting to fall.

And then Dirty Harry jumped in the photo shoot!

His jacket is genuine alpaca fur and he borrowed the hat from Jack (a great neighborhood garage sale purchase).

Samantha had plans with her friends for Halloween night (much to our disappointment; if fact, Steve has declared that she will be inviting friends over to our house from now on so that we can savor the last of our Halloween celebrations with her, ha!), so I did a special pre-Halloween dinner the night before.

There were brain-shaped muffins:

Bloody witch finger cookies:

Silly dentures (apples, peanut butter and marshmallows):

And mummy dogs:

Then, on Halloween day, I did fruit cups and a spider veggie tray for Jack's classroom.  No one signed up to bring the veggie tray so I thought that I would try to make it a little more 'enticing' for the 9 & 10 year-olds ... so I made a spider out of bread dough and then put the dip in a cup inside of it.  It was a hit!

I made a second one to take down to a neighbor's house for appetizers before trick-or-treating and also put together a fun dessert tray with peanut butter bats and witch hat cookies.

Finally, Sam had requested a 'brain cake' to take over to her friends' house.  I made one about 4 years ago for a classroom party and agreed to make one again.  They loved it!

After lots of food and fun at the neighbor's house, we headed back home -- with the rain still managing to hold off -- and took the (remaining 3 kids) trick-or-treating around the neighborhood in the golf cart.  They scored a TON of candy, which they sorted out as soon as they got home  ... and were happy to know that there was no school the next day due to a planned teaching meeting day for the district.