Pre-Halloween festivities

Georgie the root beer at brunch last week.

Henry and his "girlfriend." Haaaa. See how pleased he is at getting his picture taken?

Painting pumpkins on Thursday family night.

Yesterday I ran the Carson Park 5 & 10 (we did the 5) with my buddy Christine over at The Hoekzema. Thank you Christine! I probably slowed her down. It was my first attempt at running again after my foot injury at the end of the summer, and my first cold-weather run. We are going to attempt the Half-Marathon in May. Yikes! But I have plenty of time to prepare/train, thank goodness.

We are getting our money's worth out of the kids' costumes this year for Halloween! Here's a rundown of the festivities:

We went to the "Pumpkin Patch Brunch" at the CC last weekend. It was awesome (and I'm not just talking about the huge amounts of yummy breakfast food we all ate). We sat with some of our friends, including a little girl named Alexis whom Henry adores. Actually, I think the feeling is mutual, which is really cute. But they get kind of embarassed about it which makes it even funnier for the adults. Anyway, the kiddos also got to paint pumpkins and do other Halloween activities.

George's root beer costume has been the biggest hit ever. He picked it out himself - I was flipping through a catalog and he saw it and said, "I WANT THAT ONE!" At first I thought I could make it myself because it looked fairly simple, but then I went to the fabric store and priced the fabric and then counted up the money I'd spend in legal fees for my insanity defense when I eventually killed someone after trying to sew without a pattern I decided to just buy the costume and call it a day. He got to wear it at his parade at school on Friday, where the kids from the preschool went around the UWEC campus and trick-or-treated. Mike went along with the class for awhile and said the college students were going nuts over the "little root beer", trying to take sips out of his straw and such.

He came home with quite a haul of candy (those university secretaries were generous) and I let him pick 2 pieces to eat with lunch. Then I put his bag up on the counter and went upstairs to gather laundry. When I came back down, Georgie was sitting on the sofa with the bag of candy and a pair of scissors (which makes for opening candy wrappers soooo much easier) and there were probably 5 empty wrappers on the ground. I was about to launch into a tirade and administer a timeout when he got a stricken look on his face and then vomited all over the floor. Natural consequences at their finest! After we cleaned up the vomit I gathered the uneaten candy and headed into the kitchen. Georgie asked, "Are you going to throw it away?" I paused. "Maybe. I don't know yet," I responded. Georgie said, "You can throw it away if you want. I dont' want it anymore."

We also went to a pumpkin-painting Halloween party at our friends' house on Thursday evening. My kids corrupted the other children there with their talk of "butts." Two of the little girls came upstairs to tell me that "Henry & George are saying that they are going to cut off our butts." Nice. Let's hope we are invited back!

Henry also had a Halloween party at speech class on Thursday, where they went around the university trick-or-treating (seriously - those university secretaries are VERY generous with the candy) and then he had his class party at school on Friday. Henry is a skunk this year, but I have yet to get a good picture of him in his costume so stay tuned for a pictures later. He also wanted to get some "bad-smelling spray" to spray behind himself while he walked. While we were at Walgreens he sprayed some of that Axe Body Spray and proclaimed, "This is it! This is the stinky stuff I need for my skunk costume!" Let's hope he still feels that way when he's 15.