Our Last Halloween at Ft. Hood

The 4th grade at Montague Elementary put on a dance to Thriller this last October. They were to wear a white t-shirt and jeans and do a choreographed zombie dance. Liam was an eager participant. I filmed the whole thing only to find, when I watched it later, that it was completely blurry and you couldn't tell they were children let alone which one was Liam. It was really cute though. Liam did the whole dance. At the end when all the kids collapsed in a corpse heap Liam stayed standing. Tucking one arm behind his back and the other wrapped around his waist he dramatically bowed multiple times as the audience applauded and announced, "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Being pregnant I sobbed sentimentally through the whole thing. I got a lot of weird looks.  This is Liam in Ms. Lyman's fourth grade classroom. Liam would really like me to buy him one of these school desks. Since he already has a perfectly good desk at home, it's not happening. I also snapped a shot of Liam demonstrating his thriller arms.

Each year I start asking what kids want to be for Halloween around the beginning of October. This year...I didn't have to. They started telling me in July. Weirdly enough they didn't change their minds either. After taking an art class in August where Ian painted lots of great pictures, including bird one; he decided he wanted to be a cardinal. As he announced "it's like a blue jay, except it's red, and red is my favorite color."

I consulted with my sisters and mother all of whom are more creative than I am and came up with this Texas friendly costume. It's usually pretty hot around here on Halloween. The day before was in the nineties but the night of it actually dropped to the sixties so my kids put long sleeves under their shirt and wore long pants. They've been in Texas way too long.

Miles likes to do everything Ian does. So he insisted on being a blue jay. I have to say he made a pretty adorable one.

Liam wanted to be a ghost vampire. His was the most Halloween appropriate and also the easiest because I could buy it at Walmart...which makes my life simpler.

Our ward trunk or treat was the night before Halloween and the boys got much more candy and enjoyed this outing almost more than trick or treating in our neighborhood. Luckily our kids don't remember living in better neighborhoods, so they weren't disappointed when after six different neighborhoods and an hour and a half of trudging around the kids only found nine houses giving out candy. They were thrilled. Combo'd with our trunk or treat candy plus the reserves I always set aside after learning that candy paucity was the Fort Hood norm we had tons of candy. The kids settled down to watch a Halloween movie and eat candy. Our last Halloween was one of our best. I took all three boys by myself and they were all well behaved. Matt passed out candy. Despite the fact that only a handful of houses give out candy there are usually at least 200 trick or treat-ers that come to our door. I will not, at this time, animadvert on one of my favorite pet peeves....but our kids had a great Halloween.