Halloween 2014

I know there are other posts I need to catch up on before this, but I can't really remember what they are right now, so I'll do our Halloween one first :)

I say it every year, but we love Halloween! Really the whole month of October, and all of Fall! This year we've had beautiful weather and lucked out again on the 31st and it got up to 70 and stayed nice for trick or treating.

Ashton and Gunnar have been SO into football this fall...they both play it with their friends at every recess and have even started to love watching it on TV with Lars. So they decided they wanted to be football players for Halloween. I checked around with friends and facebook first to see if we could borrow all or part of costumes, but no luck. So we ended up ordering their costumes online and they came a couple weeks before. Both fit a little small, but they worked.

As I do every year I wanted to take them out to do a pre-Halloween photo shoot, but didn't plan it out very well and kind of did it last minute the Sunday before Halloween because I wanted to do it on one of the highschool football fields when no one was there. So we ran out there right before it was getting dark and wouldn't you know...that day was FREEZING! And windy! I really hadn't realized it till the moment we got there and got out of the car. So of course the boys being in their thin jerseys were beyond cold and Gunnar cried and screamed at me almost the entire time after I got these couple pictures right when we got there and we weren't even on the real field I realized a little too late.

 Ashton was actually really good and I got these few cute ones of him before we all ran back to the car.

So it was pretty much a fail.
Oh well.

Then when Halloween finally arrived, wouldn't you know Ashton decided he didn't want to be a football player after all! grrrr. He actually got ready for school and had it on and was excited to go, but by the time I got to his class to take pictures at his party, he pulled me aside and was saying he wanted to be something else. After school was a complete nightmare because he had a total meltdown about it! When I got to the bottom of why, I found out that some 5th grader told him that the Houston Texans were stupid. Nice. So he took that as his costume was stupid.

(I did a photo booth for his party...it was actually a lot of fun even though Ashton looks mad)

 I printed out a bunch of props to use :)

I stayed in Ashton's class for half of his party, then went to Gunnar's class for his. I was only responsible for taking pictures in his class, so that was nice to not have to prepare anything!

 Anyway after school was over, I finally talked Ashton into keeping his costume on to go to get free Jamba Juice's and to go to Lars' work, and I pulled off at a park and took more pictures of them after we left there...

 He stuffed his jersey with leaves :)

 ...but then when we got home he started all over again being upset and ended up coming up with something totally different to wear. I felt bad for him and mad at the kid who said that to him at school!!

Gunnar was happy as can be to be a Tennessee Titans football player :)

And off subject...it was kind of funny that the weekend before...their two chosen teams (Titans & Texans) actually played each other and they made a bet on the game that whoever's team lost had to do the other team's chores for 2 days. Luckily Gunnar's team lost ;) he is a good sport & did Ashton's chores without complaining!

Anyway back to Halloween....I originally wanted to be a cheerleader to go along with the football theme, but after trying on one friend's old uniform (and it not fitting so great!) I came to my senses and decided to be something different. I didn't tell Lars or the boys what I had come up with, I just surprised them at school and at work :) It was a lot of fun being a scarecrow and really easy to put together!

 After Lars got home and we all stopped fighting about Ashton and his costume.......

We headed over for our yearly chili gathering at our neighbor's house. Crazy that we've been doing this for so many years. Such a fun tradition!

Then Ashton took off with Tyler and Kenna to trick or treat...

...and Lars and I took Gunnar around for awhile.

We ran into Gunnar's best little buddy Owen, I love this picture of them...

Eventually we all came home and handed out candy...

 And checked out what they got :) 

Such a fun night. Already can't wait till next year :) Maybe I'll start working on my costume now...nah, I seem to do better last minute!