Halloween 2007

Yes, the Urben's DID celebrate Halloween this year. I'm getting better, only one week overdue!



I took this one before school. Ash can't dress up in costume at her school, so she came up with this adorable festive outfit. She's so creative!

The kids at Alex's school did a parade around the campus for all the parents, followed by a parade through the main areas of the nursing home next door. What a treat! Later on Mark and I went up to Alex's class for his class party where we made our witches brew (the same concoction from Alex's birthday party) complete with the dry ice and molded hand. This time we had each child add a spider to the mix, which later we ladeled in to their cups for them to keep. Each kiddo got a turn at stiring the witches brew. That was a huge hit with the kids. We also did a pumpkin craft with pumpkin seeds and ate graveyard cake and other goodies. Everyone had such a great time, including myself. I love, love, love being in his classroom especially now that the kids have warmed up to me. Last week I subbed for his class and Mark was able to come help for a short time. Hopefully, I'll be able to do that more often.

Back to Halloween! Ashley dressed up as a pirate and Alex dubbed himself "The Unknown Phantom". I learned a lesson about costumes this year. I don't so much like the ones where you can't even tell your son is the one underneath. I'm setting up to take pictures and thinking how silly it is that I can't even see who it is! I could have picked a really awesome costume from the internet and just cut and pasted it in. No one would ever know! Seriously though, the kid in black in my pictures IS Alex, promise. (NEVER AGAIN!)

Kel, Savannah, Ciara and Matthew came over and we made the rounds in the neighborhood. The weather could not have been any more perfect. Daddy and Brian stayed home to hand out candy and scare the few children we actually have around here out of the neighborhood. He kept the the door open with just the glass storm door closed, and when the kids would ring the bell he would jump out from around the corner and slam himself up against the door. I think found himself a new Halloween job.

Rub a Dub Dub, we have a TUB!

The plumber finally made his last trip out to install the tub fixtures yesterday. Lastnight the kids got to stay up late and enjoy their very first jacuzzi bath.



The tile surround for the tub was finished today, but other than that, nothing has changed. Thursday will be 10 weeks since the first day of demolition.

"I'm STILL six"

After singing Happy Birthday to himself everyday for a week and anticipating this special day. Alex is SIX! This weekend we had Alex's 6th Birthday Party (which I'll get to shortly) and according to him, he turned six on the day of his party because "why else would we put a big 6 on the wall??" After debating and explaining, I finally decided to just leave it alone and let him be 6 a little early because even though I know he gets it, I refused to argue with this FIVE year old. Fast forward to this morning. Daddy and I wake him up singing Happy Birthday, we finish singing and I sit down on the bed in the dark and give him a big hug and ask him "how old are you?" I'm thinking how exciting it is to finally be able to say you're a whole year older right? That's how it always is, they get so excited to hear themselves say it, what better way to start the day. This headstrong little booger replies "I'm STILL six".

On Saturday we did a Halloween costume party complete with pumpkins, games, ghoulish treats and witches brew. It was a big success and probably one of the most laid back, fun parties we've had to date. I guess I'm finally learning how to ENJOY the party as opposed to running around like a mad woman trying to make everything perfect.

As soon as most everyone had arrived, we all got to work on our witches brew. The kids had a BLAST helping with our concoction. They especially enjoyed adding the hand (a frozen rubber glove makeshift mold) and dry ice.


After snacking on witches brew, fingers, spiders, and apple bites Mark told the story of Hal O Ween.After each gooey part of the story, the kiddos would go reach inside the box and feel the gooey parts of what was left of Hal. Ashley did an awesome job of preparing each body part and making sure no one looked inside the box. This turned out to be one of the most exciting activities of the day. The kids got a really big kick out of touching the gooey body parts and trying to guess what each really was.






After that we moved on to pumpkin decorating. Everyone decorated a baby pumpkin to take home with them with stickers, glitter glue and whatever else we had in our craft box. The kids all did a super job and managed to keep their costumes mostly clean. Hmmm....no wonder the costumes were so clean...lets take a closer look at Mr. Matthew. Hey buddy, you're off juuust a tad.



And then there was the haystack scavenger hunt, and cake cutting. Most of the kids stuck around for quite a while playing in the backyard since it was an absolutely gorgeous day.