Halloween 2018

This year my kids were convinced they were going to pick out what they were dressing up as for Halloween without my coercing them into a family theme. However, I brought up an idea and showed them a picture of a cute little baby dressed as a football and then the Tappana football family theme was born. I mean, no one could pass up Ivy dressed as a football.

So Brigham became a referee, Lydia a cheerleader, and Kendrick, Ammon and I were all football players. For what team might you ask? Well, BYU Cougars of course! (Except for Ammon who wanted to be a Seahawks player and I relented)

I loved the idea that when we handed Ivy off to each other, it was passing the football. She really made the cutest football.

We had plenty of opportunities to dress up this year, with lots of exercise class Halloween parties.

For Rizzmic, Ivy and Kendrick were dressed as skeletons and I went as a zombie-runner. I even won a prize for dressing up!

And for my favorite, Bootcamp, I borrowed Brigham's ref costume and worked up a good sweat while occasionally yelling "offsides!"  Kendrick went in his pumpkin shirt and Ivy was a football to complete my theme.

Brigham and I held our annual Halloween party and the costumes were great, as always.

We played a game where each team had to come up with what they would do in different horror movie scenarios, and then the best answer was voted on. I haven't laughed that hard in a LONG time. It was gruesome, outrageous, creative, ridiculous, and hysterical. My group members got really into it, which made it all the better.

We also ate delicious Halloween treats, and this year my fingers hit the spot!

Of course, Halloween can't pass by without a pumpkin carving night.

Lydia completely carved her pumpkin on her own this year without any help. It was fun to see her be able to be creative and design and execute on her own.

Ammon did a lot of work on his, but the pattern he picked out was pretty intricate so Brigham did most of the design carving.

Ivy loved playing in the pumpkin guts. She didn't really try to eat them, but mostly just liked feeling them in her fingers.

She also really enjoyed sucking on the stem of her pumpkin.

Although I carved Kendrick's pumpkin, he was very specific about what he wanted it to look like. It had to be a nice vampire. So nice vampire I carved before moving on to carve Ivy's.

Altogether, our pumpkins turned out great!

Especially lit up outside!

On actual Halloween, I let Kendrick dress up as a "green dragon" since he constantly insisted that he was a nice, green dragon.

I'm not sure that dragons wear fedora's, but it works for Kendrick.

I also had a little witch outfit I found in our costume box and I HAD to have Ivy wear it.

None of the pictures do it justice. She was the cutest, fluffiest witch I've ever seen. Especially with that hat.

I took the younger two kids to visit Brigham at work so they could show off costumes and say hi to their dad.

That night we went and got dinner at Chick-Fil-A since the kids received free meals if they were dressed up. After that, we went to the neighboorhood next to ours and the kids trick-or-treated.

It was supposed to POUR that evening, but we lucked out with the perfect trick-or-treating weather. It wasn't too cold and it didn't rain until we had finished.

Kendrick was a hoot trick-or-treating. He loved to make conversation at everyone's door. He tried to take more than one candy. He stopped to admire all the Halloween decorations and held very tightly to my hand when we passed by the ones that scared him. He cracked many passer-bys up by singing, "Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. If you don't, I don't care, I'll pull down your underwear." It was a pure delight watching him experience the night, especially since he had been in love with Halloween all month. When he was tired he matter of factly said, "I'm done trick-or-treating." So I said ok and took him back while Brigham stayed out with Lydia and Ammon for a little bit longer.

I'm glad we turned in when we did because we did NOT need any more candy.

We ended up with five bowls full of candy. And you can't tell from this picture, but those are GIANT bowls. So. Much. Candy. I swore this year that we would not come home with near as much candy as years past, and yet, we came home with more!

I guess that means it was successful. 

Really, we did have a wonderful time this year with older kids really starting to be able to do some of the activities on their own, and with younger toddlers and babies making the magic exciting. Happy Halloween from the Tappana's, and go Cougars!