SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES...

We had a FABULOUS time at our party, as Despicable Me characters Gru, Dr. Nefario (I forgot to wear my gloves - oops!), and a couple of adorable Minions!

The Costume Contest Winners were.....

Best Couple: Mike and Cari - Clown Fish in AnemonesBest Family Theme: The Sanchez Family - Fire, Firefighter, Dalmation, and Fire TruckCutest: Talon - Frankenbaby (with his Daddy - Pretty Fly for a White Guy, and Mommy - Devilishous)

Scariest: Christy - Zombie Mommy (with her hubby - the Ghost Daddy)

Most Original: Katie - Dia de los Muertos
And the rest of our awesome party-goers!...

Christina and Will - Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch

Desmond - Mr. T (who actually tied for Cutest with Talon - we pushed the votes for prizes, since Mr. T's mom won for Most Original)

Natalie - Death

Stirlin, Emma, Dawn, and Coltin - The Ivy Leaguers (Dawn's shirt did not arrive in time for the party - just picture her in a YALE shirt!)

Mayka, Victoria, Eli, and Alessandro - Bride of Frankenstein, Cow, Rastafarian, and Transformer

Matt - Minimus (or was he Maximus?... And he was actually a tie for Most Original. Though he also received multiple votes for Cutest. And Scariest...)

Mason - Tiger (with his Mommy and Daddy, of course, Michelle and Jerry)

And just for fun, here is James in my nefarious goggles:

Happy Halloween to all!

PARTY BY TWO'S

My camera batteries (both of them) were dead before the party even started last night. That means I must sum up the Halloween Party in some 2-word phrases, and these 2 photos that I borrowed from Christina's blog:
(James is also in the house in this photo. At one point, all 7 'big boys' were in there together. Just picture a clown car. And yes, Cora was the only 'big girl' at the party. Emma and Victoria were in attendance, but since they aren't walking yet, she didn't play with them much. Good thing she can hold her own against the boys!)

As for those phrases...
kid chaos (there were 12 munchkins in attendance, all aged 2 and under!)
food frenzy
balloon explosion
big fire
creative costumes

Don't worry, we had Jay's camera set up for the haunted photobooth, so we have documentation of each and every costume in attendance.

Photos forthcoming...

TRUNK-OR-TREAT

We weren't planning to do anything Halloweeny today, but we ended up with a last minute invitation to a trunk-or-treat party at the Knights of Columbus. And we HAD to go, since we were invited by our friends Michelle and Noelle, from our old daycare. James was so happy to see Gabriel again, and Cora wanted nothing to do with me once she had the option of going from Michelle to Noelle and back again. After running in circles for FOREVER, the boys finally settled enough to go outside and participate in the trunk-or-treat (for those who don't do such things - maybe it's a Southern thing? - it's trick-or-treating at the trunks of vehicles in a parking lot, rather than going door-to-door, so it's much safer, faster, and less tiring on little bodies). When the boys were done, somebody gave James a tiny flashlight. He looked into his little bag and exclaimed "My have CANDY!" I guess that even though I thought he had trick-or-treating all figured out, there was still something missing in that connection to candy... Needless to say, he was then especially thrilled with the activity and wanted to do it again. Instead, we piled onto the "hayride" (there was no hay, but James was happy to ride in the tractor trailer nonetheless). We all enjoyed the hayride until a couple of guys (party participants) jumped out the woods and dumped a stink bomb on us. Yup, burning eyes and nose for me and my babies. An d because Cora was strapped to my back, I couldn't easily/quickly get to her to rescue her. At least was on Lucas' lap (Gabriel's daddy), and he was able to cover the boys' faces. I was not impressed, and it was definitely time to call it a night at that point.

Before the party, however, and after the park, I fed the kids PB (no J, at their request) sandwiches for dinner on the floor in the laundry room. Since the house is still a disaster from the Halloween party and we haven't even put the booster seats back on the kitchen chairs. When I came back in to check on them after getting my own snack, I found them like this: Such improvisers.

PARKED OUT.

While Daddy studies...

I piled the kids in the car, texted their buddies that a park trip was in the works, and stopped by Wendy's on the way for a special treat (chicken nuggets). But because James skipped his nap (for the second time this weekend - NOT COOL), he passed out in the car and had to be woken by Manu to play once we arrived. Of course, while we waited for Manu (and Sophie and Leo), Cora happily ate most of the chicken nuggets. Finger lickin' good! Good thing James didn't want any when he woke up!

After 20 minutes of park play, I was totally ready to go. We had these awesome "helpers" following us around everywhere. I don't mean to be rude, but come on. Why don't parents watch their kids at the park? I literally had 2 little girls that would NOT stop picking up Cora and freaking her out (and 2 more that kept grabbing her hands, pulling her this way and that, getting in her face, and wanting to hold her on the slides). Baby Doll has no fear and thinks she has mad skills, so she was climbing everything, everywhere. Obviously, she can NOT be trusted to play alone on park structures yet. And since she and James are often running in different directions, I do a mad dash to keep each one safe. These little girls just wanted to play with Cora and help, but they were totally stressing me out. For one, Cora did NOT want their help. And two, they were not old/big enough to be picking up my fragile little baby. No thank you. And they didn't take the hint. They didn't go away. I stuck it out for about an hour, then told the kids we were packing it up and heading home. Mama was exhausted. Next time, we are going to the little park, where the kids can only play on the ONE structure and there are never more than a couple of kids around (and usually with parents that pay attention to them). Thank goodness Sophie was there to help me with James!

WALLY-WORLD

Our kids LOVE the grocery store. They really do. And I hope they always like to go shopping with us (and continue to behave themselves as well as they do now - they always make us look good in public). James gets SO excited when I talk about grocery shopping or whenever we drive past Kroger. He will yell "I go in the shopping cart!" and "I go to the store with Mommy!" Needless to say, when we visited the other grocery store last weekend (AKA Walmart), he was ecstatic. Because it's huge. And there is way more than groceries to look at. And THEN, I found a double-seater shopping cart, and put both kids side-by-side for the first time, and the boy was in heaven. He didn't even mind that Cora laid her head lazily on his shoulder through half the trip.

We've been holding out on those "car carts" though. You know the ones. It's not that we're worried about germs and whatnot (because, really, what's the point? they touch EVERYTHING, everywhere we go anyway), but we know that once we use one, the kids will ALWAYS want to use one. And since there are only 2 of them at our Kroger, well, you can imagine how seldom we'd actually be able to grab hold of one.

HE'S A BRAVE MAN...

Yes, Jay DID in fact shave his head completely bald for Halloween. He wanted to be authentic. And he even let James help him...

This was the result of James' efforts, before I took over to ensure that Jay didn't lose any eyebrows!

(By the way, James is wearing a hospital bracelet because he had his 6-month Kawasaki recheck with the cardiologist on Thursday. Everything looked great, and he goes back in a year for another check. This is something he will likely continue to do for the rest of his life.)

(Oh, and Cora WAS scared and unimpressed by her Daddy's haircut. It took her a little while to warm back up to him Thursday night. And Friday morning, she didn't want to get out of the crib into his arms, and waited for me instead. As for myself, I'm still doing double-takes every time I see him...)

OKTOBERFEST

Because we like to go all-out for fall holidays, we also attended our Castle Club's Oktoberfest celebration after work today. Jay ate a bratwurst with sauerkraut, and the kids and I shared pretzels. Since we crashed happy hour with kids in tow, we skipped the beer. Though it was tempting. If only it hadn't been so cold...

(The temperature drop is to blame for James wearing my shirt tied around his neck... And that's a $20 in his hand, running in to buy pretzels. He was skipping and prancing and yelling "My got MONEY!")

HAUNTED HALLWAYS

We went on a field trip after dinner last night. We loaded the kids into the car, in their PJs, and took them to work. Why? Because there has been a cut-throat hallway decorating contest going on this week amongst the branches of the Environmental Laboratory in the spirit of Halloween, and we knew the kids would love it. So we waited until the night before judging (when everything was complete, and we knew the offices would be empty, so that the kids wouldn't annoy our coworkers with their squeals of delight), then let them run wild. It was awesome (and it so completely wore the kids out that even Cora slept through the night)!

(This is where the kids grabbed the legs of the skeleton and James yelled "My hugging the bones!")

Most hallways were decorated with tombstones and bats and spiderwebs and black garbage bags, but a few stood out as the clear winners to us. The MIO branches did a graveyard of retired funding programs, which was hilarious, and a Hollywood films theme (with each door decorated with a different scary movie).

(I had to post that one for mom!)

EP-R (Jay's branch) did a Wizard of Oz theme, complete with tornado and cornfield and crushed witch and enchanted forest and lollipop land.

(Cora went right for the ruby slippers, of course...)

EP-R even recruited their branch members to dress the parts. Sandy was an adorable cowardly lion, and Jessica pulled off the bad witch, even though she's totally sweet. (Other characters included Glenda the good witch, a couple of munchkins, the great and powerful Wizard, the tin man, and a flying monkey and her henchman)

Other festivities today included the much anticipated hallway judging, an unorganized costume contest (which was hilarious, with the pair that dressed up as our Director and Deputy Director getting a well deserved win), a strange pumpkin carving contest (the same guy carved 3 of the 5 entries...), and an awesome potluck party (where we ate ourselves silly). It was a day full of mayhem. Not so productive (on the work front), but oh-so fun!

1ST FALL FESTIVAL

James enjoyed his first Fall Festival at his new school today (Cora got to participate in the trick-or-treating, but fell asleep before the cupcakes and lunch were handed out). There were games (put together by the older kids) and trick-or-treating (of course), with PLENTY of candy and snacks. Sophie spent the morning helping with the party, so James was able to go around to all the stations with her and Manu. The boys reportedly had a great time, and gorged themselves on candy - so much so, that they passed on their sandwiches in order to make more room for junk food. THAT'S the holiday spirit boys!!

James was apparently fascinated with one of the big kids' Science Fair projects. Perhaps we DO have a budding scientist on our hands...
Not sure what this face is about: That's better. Cupcakes always make me happy too buddy.

PARK PLAY

Hands-down, the best thing so far about The Great Daycare Switcheroo is the added time we're getting with the kids each day. Whether we go for a run in the military park or around the neighborhood in the jogging stroller, play in the yard or make crafts in the kitchen, or take the kiddos to one of the 3 playgrounds around town (something we have done 5 times in the past 2 weeks already), we are all loving the extra family time. And I'll admit, it's nice to spend more "1-on-2" time with the kids as well, especially for Jay, since previously he very rarely had time alone with the kids. It's definitely a different dynamic.

We may not be getting home any earlier in the evening to start chores and dinner, but that's OK. Having fun with the kids is a far better use of our time!