Tappana Times: October with the Incredibles

The Tappanas did not float away this October, despite Washington's best efforts. It was the wettest October EVER recorded.

Kendrick pulling faces

Despite the dreary, dreary rain, we have managed to maintain entertaining times and Halloween fun.
Kendrick decided to really find his voice and LOVES animal sounds. He practices until he can say most of them. He also pulls this weird funny face ALL THE TIME. What a character.

We have also discovered that Kendrick is TERRIFIED of umbrellas. Like ridiculously so - scream hysterically, climb up my body, and shake and tremble in fear so.

It doesn't matter if they are opened or closed. It's all the same scary beast to him.

Normally, being Washingtonians, we do without umbrellas, but it's not fun standing at the bus stop getting soaked every day as we send Ammon off to school. So our neighborhood gets to endure lots of hysterical screaming. The bus driver finally asked me what Kendrick's problem was, and when I told her Kendrick is afraid of umbrellas, she said,"That's weird! I've never heard of that."

Neither have I, lady.

It's funny, sad, and painful all at the same.

In October, we of course had to carve pumpkins and we invited my parents and sister over for a fun family night activity. My mom hates carving pumpkins so she observed while Kayleen and my dad worked their magic.

I made my kids do a little more work this year, and they were required to get out all their guts before I would help them. They did ok...but I still had to do most of the scraping.

We each had our own pumpkin and the kids were quite creative with their designs. I had them draw on paper what they wanted it to look like before I carved the face for them. Ammon wanted six eyes, sharp teeth, and a triangle nose. Lydia wanted eyelashes and a bat and star decoration on the sides.

The baby mostly observed with my mom, and honestly was the crankiest monster that night. He still got a baby pumpkin that I carved for him with a cute little face.

He liked playing with it...for a minute, and then he didn't anymore. Twice.

This year our family theme for our Halloween costumes was The Incredibles. I mean, we are pretty Incredible.

Brigham REALLY wanted to do it since we have all the right people to mimic the family, but he was the only one. So we made a deal with him that if he exercised for one month (at least 30 minutes, 5 days a week) then we would do it. Brigham held up his end of the bargain and so the Incredibles we were.

And I have to admit, it worked out great. I even got a new "mom" haircut last month that I could style to look just like Elastigirl (note: not for the costume - the timing just worked out), Lydia is growing out her bangs so she had the perfect hair to hang in her eyes (though it's not dark), Ammon is blonde like Dash, and Kendrick and JackJack are both babies...and trouble. Brigham could use some toning he was told, but hey, he worked out to earn these costumes!

We had a friend that loaned Brigham and I our costumes and I sewed Incredible shirts for the kids. Probably one of the easiest years to put together costumes. Thank goodness!!

Halloween morning Kendrick decided to work on his own masterpiece for his costume. More like he was left unsupervised  with Lydia and Ammon watching him for far too long and found a marker he managed to get the lid off of.

In person it really looked like he had black blood coming out of his mouth - vampire style. And he sure turned into a devil when I took the marker away from him.

That morning was my regular boot camp exercise class at the church. The instructor (dressed as Richard Simmons) turned it into a Halloween edition. We all came dressed up, got our butts kicked like normal, and then had "healthy-ish" treats of protein balls and whole wheat muffins afterwards.















I dressed up as Zorro and it helped me realize how uneducated my kids are about the good old movies. Ammon asked me who Zorro was, so I showed him the movie case so he could see what Zorro looks like. When I was all ready to go he exclaimed, "You look just like him!" Hahahahaha. Made my day.

My boys went in their cute Halloween shirts (not allowed to wear costumes to school, boo!) and I only wished I could have caught Lydia with them too. They later donned their Incredibles costumes for the evening.

Trick or treating was wet, but not too unbearable that night and we got PLENTY of candy! Kendrick lost it 2/3 of the way through so my mom finished taking my kids with my sister so I could take the baby home and dry ourselves off. I mean if you're afraid of umbrellas, it doesn't bode well for keeping dry. Or for nights of trick or treating when lots of parents are out with umbrellas.

That wraps up Halloween, but we still had more stuff like my brother's We The People competition that I went to (think government/constitution debate/trivia type event), Kendrick actually falling asleep on his own -miracle!-, and I found my nephew's absolute twin at our library. Seriously, when Quenton saw a picture, he even thought it was himself.

I keep trying to take videos of Kendrick reading to himself, because he does it all the time and makes all the animal sounds and there is nothing more adorable. But it is almost impossible to catch it.

This video is a mediocre capture of the cuteness, but it'll have to do.

Despite all the rain in October, the sun came out three times. And when it did, so did we.

Because, just like our costumes, fall colors in Washington are incredible!

Tappana Halloween Party #???

Because I had been sick for so long, this year I decided to have a more laid-back Halloween party. Meaning: instead of planning two or three games, I only planned one. I just didn't feel up to tackling more than that. But of course we still had all the other works. Treats, costumes, prizes, the Divorce Game. All kid-free. Because that's how you really party.

After some Halloween Would You Rather questions while waiting for all guests to show up, the game that I put together this year was Pyramid - Halloween Edition! I split the group up into to teams and they competed and chose categories and played just like the game show on TV. We then had a second round with even harder categories. The winning team got one of these cute little prizes I made.

Those edible skellys are on a brownie for the dirt. Thanks Pinterest!

We had awesome costumes this year. Here are some, but not all:

We've got a period costume, "sheet music", Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, a hunter and his dead deer, a penguin and a lady bug, a bowler and her hazmat husband.

The costume prize winners were the hunter and deer and the Back to the Future couple (with their bumble bee baby- nursing babies are my one exception to the no kid rule).

They won Pumpkin Juice and Ghost Tears (really sparkling cider) with skeleton necklaces to wear to declare their costume dominance.

After playing pyramid we had lots of good food and treats. Unfortunately, I only took a picture of my treat and forgot to take anymore of all the fun stuff that everyone brought - like Rachel's awesome Halloween cake balls.











Of course, no Halloween party thrown by Brigham and I is complete without the Divorce Game (otherwise known as the name game, celebrity, etc). This year the girls won -yeah baby!! We had eight million singers in the bucket and it was hilarious on the word round when someone would just say "....singer....". Worst clue ever because we had Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Tupac, Henry Connick Jr, Celine Dion, and many many more. Hahaha, SO many people tried to think of something good and then with much frustration only managed to say singer. Classic.

After that most people had to get home to relieve babysitters so the party wound down. It was a fabulous night. Though it wasn't as action packed as usual, it was still fun and I know that we'll have much more for future years of partying!