TRACE'S PLACE: Halloween 2014

We will dub this "the Halloween of many faces," where neither of my children could just smile for the camera. Dear me. I nearly reached capacity on my camera roll simply trying to capture one, JUST ONE, shot of them simply smiling at the camera.

Please note Exhibit A, B, and C below.

So to hear the "backstory" of this holiday, our kitchen had been invested with fruit flies.

Yes, I know, I cringled a little just typing it.

My kids are big fruit eaters and up until about 2 weeks ago, I kept our apples and bananas in a basket on the countertop. Well, let this be a P.S.A to you. I have never in all my 39 years seen such a scene. I began to think I was living in the amazon jungle. I briefly contemplated buying mosquito nets to surround our beds. I'm kidding. But I did spend an entire nights sleep dreaming of being carried away by fruit flies.

So, on the night we were supposed to carve pumpkins, I instead, sprayed a dangerous amount of Raid Flying Insect Repellent all over our entire kitchen, prepared multiple fruit fly traps of apple cider vinegar and rotten bananas and declared our kitchen temporarily contaminated. As in, we're not even making coffee.

So... we ate our store bought dinner on a blanket in the living room and instead of "carving" pumpkins which according to Ace Hardware will only attract more gnats, we went with the ~~cheater~~ plastic funny face push ins instead of the knife carving/pulp removing/open pumpkin/candle Halloween.

Luckily, the kids didn't seem to mind.

Exhibit A of my attempt at a picture...

Finally...

The night before Halloween, we went to Keatyn's preschool fall party. Spyro the Skylander and Ariel the Little Mermaid made their first appearance. And that mask on Trace's face lasted all of 5 minutes.

Halloween morning, before Keatyn's gymnastics, my friend Lesley and I took our girlies to IHOP for their (and this is important) Free Scary Face Pancakes. We were among the masses and the wait with 2 preschoolers got a bit hairy. An hour later, the waitress brought "crazy face" pancakes instead of "scary face" pancakes and then charged us $4.95 for them. Ha! We just had to laugh and go on. Sweet memories with our little ladies.

Exhibit B...

And then I gave up.

Part of my anxiety over the Fruit Fly Invasion of 2014 was that we were having family over for trick or treating and dinner on Halloween night. So after our morning activities of IHOP and gymnastics, Special K and I came home and scrubbed the cabinets and countertops with cleaning vinegar to rid them of the copious amounts of Raid they had endured all week. I then lit 4 candles trying to get rid of the vinegar smell before everyone arrived.

Exhibit C...

Seriously?!?

We were excited because this was our first Halloween in our new neighborhood. There are only about 30 houses and not a lot of little kids but we had high hopes. I'll say it was the coldest, windiest Halloween I can remember but we braved the weather and headed out.

This is not a big trick or treating street and we will probably load up and go to a bigger neighborhood next year if weather permits but the kiddos seemed to be pleased with their loot. Keatyn, bless her little red headed heart, kept up with those big boys like a champ!

These were our first trick or treaters ever. Yes, and like dorks we took a picture. In the 9 years we were on Lower Mill, we never once had one. I never even bought candy, so this was kind of exciting!

This was the quietest I believe I've ever seen her, sitting happily with her bag of candy on the couch after we got home. Needless to say, neither of mine ever put a bite of soup, chili, or corndog in their mouths that night but that was one battle I wasn't going to fight. I mean, it was Halloween after all and I was 7 and 3 once too.

The next day, we decided to skate some of that sugar overload off. Sisty and Granddaddy met us there and Jimmy and I opted to wear our regular shoes this time instead of skates. Yes, holding 2 kids up while on roller skates yourself is ever bit as hard as you can imagine. We were thankful for the 2 extra set of hands and feet.