Of Domestic Flare-ups and Falloween {Foto Dump!}

So I've never been that big on Halloween--at least when it comes to the creepy stuff, and I'm not one to go all out when it comes to holiday decorations because I'm inherently lazy, and decorating = work. But somehow this year I actually noticed the multitude of Fall/Halloween decorations accumulating in the basement, probably because I kept tripping over them, and somehow they made it upstairs, and suddenly I found myself in the middle of a full-blown Fall-oween domestic flareup:

Both inside...

Favorite find: the pumpkinhead.

...and out.

...and out.

Funny story: the kids apperntly think that our Halloween spider dubbed "Webster" who hangs from the ceiling has the same attributes as Santa; although we said nothing about it, they decided he watches them to see if they're good or bad and determines their trick-or-treating fate. So, like any good parents would, we totally ran with it. One day, when Erik was trying to convince me to let him have something he wanted (probably junk food) and I said no, he came up to me with a very serious look on his face and leaned in close to my ear to whisper, "Mommy, the SPIDER might hear you saying 'no' and know you're not being nice to me. Do you want to go trick-or-treating or not?" Let's just say that he got a little lesson in who's the mom-boss and who's still the kid, Magical Spider or not. 

Back to the domestic flareup: it started getting real when my non-baking self not only decided to randomly bake something pumpkin-y, but actually cook a real live pumpkin instead of whipping out the can opener in order to do so. I'd bought the pumpkin on my last grocery run--mostly for the seeds, because I do love roasted pumpkin seeds so--but at the height of the flareup I somehow decided that attempting some gluten-and-dairy-free pumpkin oatmeal cookies would be "fun." Thankfully, YouTube helped me cook the pumpkin without butchering it, resulting in a nice batch of cookies and leftover mashed pumpkin for some pumpkin stew. Which, of course, the kids hated with a passion (more for me!).

Falloween also brought plenty of leaf jumping:

And school Halloween parades, where an astronaut and

Spiderman proudly showed off their costumes 

(thankfully not on the same day, so we could be present for both!)

And of course, there was pumpkin carving 

at the last possible minute. 

Mine wasn't quite finished yet...but it did finally make it
to the porch with the rest of its pumpkin family long after bedtime!

 And then it was Halloween for real!!!!

These three kept asking all day why Halloween was taking so long and if it was time to go trick-or-treating yet.

And as exhausting as it all is, their fun and excitement is the perfect excuse to join in on the fun, and the perfect reminder that we're never too old to be total goofballs.

Peter played it safe, while I was going for friendly jack o' lantern
and accidentally landed on creepy joker face. Whoops.

Separating and trading loot--many thanks to Pinterest for this list of gf/df candy for Ethan!

  Cheers to a fun night and a perfectly-timed sugar crash just in time for bed! 

Happy Halloween!!!