Halloween Fun

I love the weeks leading up to holidays but they are so, so busy!

On Thursday, the Herriman orchestra had their Halloween Hi-Jinx concert. Bianca's group (the violas and cellos) had to dress-up as witches. It took a little scraping things together and layering a couple witch costumes we were able to get our hands on, but her costume turned out really cute. She even dressed up her viola with a chain that attached to her.

Eric sung in the choir and his group--the basses and tenors--couldn't quite make up their minds on a theme, so they were a big hodgepodge of Halloween characters. Eric's costume was some kind of video game (I can't quite remember what it's called now). He looked pretty scary after the make-up. It was funny, though. Portia--my scaredy-cat usually--clung to Eric that night.

Don't mind me, I'm playing around with editing my photos. I love the swirly option on photobucket. Yeah, I know, I'm an amateur.

On Friday, Bianca's school had their costume parade and class Halloween party. Bianca's costume this year is Mozart. We improvised with this Victorian Boy costume and called it Mozart. She walked through the parade playing Turkish March and Danse Macabre (because she had it memorized from the Herriman Hi-Jinx concert). Pretty creative, I thought. Then I was in charge of the pumpkin bowling station at her class party. It was a lot of work to keep setting up the pins (filled water bottles) but the kids seemed to really like it. Here's Bianca with Jakon and Makayla from her fifth-grade class.

Eric went home to Dallas this weekend so I made it a point to make sure we did tons of fun things. We spent Friday night with Aunt Joanie and Uncle Bruce. We ate beef stew for dinner and then went through some of Grandma Peggy's things. She loved pretty crystal dishes and milk glass. I took quite a bit of stuff and am wondering if I'm fancy enough to use it. I'm going to try.

On Saturday, I dressed the girls up in their witch costumes, and we went to spot the witches at Gardner Village. We had a nice lunch at Archibald's, tried Fried Green Tomatoes, and then walked around looking for witches. At night, we went to the free haunted house a neighbor does every year (Portia refused to go in at the last moment).

After putting Portia to bed, Bianca and I watched the movie Coraline together because we had both read the book recently. The movie was even more creepy than the book, if that's possible!

On Sunday, the girls and I designed and carved a kitty cat jack-o-lantern and baked pumpkin seeds. The weekend without Eric didn't seem so long after all. In fact, the whole month of October flew by like a witch on a broom. I'll be sad to take down the Halloween decorations tomorrow.