Trick or Treat

We had our annual Halloween party the weekend before Halloween. We always have such a fun time, but I am always sad we are so limited by space! I wish we could've invited so many more people, but we were PACKED as it was. We got all ready and I had to feed the judges before everyone got there. I love this picture. We have made a point to add the boys to our family. Yes, our lives have changed a lot since their arrival, but we don't use them as an excuse to be lame. Which I like. In fact, we do MORE fun things because of them. 

Luna and Neville made an appearance. For those of you who were wondering, yes, they do get married.

A quarter and a gumball machine. SO CUTE. Tori drew that quarter on the drive over. Luckily they had pretty bad traffic on the way over so she had time to finish it. Not so luckily, they were stopped on the freeway for a couple hours on the way home too. :(

Joey, Natalie and their adorable Bumble Bee

Charlie Brown and Lucy made an appearance as well.

The witch and her ninja.

The Hulk and his buddy the Ninja

This is what happened when I asked them for another pose. I blame Todd. Too hot to handle, gentlemen. lol

The boys sat in their high chairs and judged the competition for a bit and then got a little rowdy and joined the games. Meaning they needed to be held and played with.

We play the same game every year. Trick or Treat. There is a bowl full of strips of paper that either say Treat or have a trick you have to do. Luna performing the scarecrow.

Doug with his poisoned bottle.

Death by Chocolate

The Mad Dog

Smashing Pumpkins. Tori seriously owned this game. Hilarious

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.

Loser had to cackle like a witch. :) Well done Lincoln!

The Grim Reaper. Whipped Cream and Butter Knife shaving. We LOVED having so many kids over for these games! They were such good sports about everything!

Ghost Buster

The Mummy

Smashing Pumpkins take 2. Lori has the worst gag reflex ever. That would be ONE marshmallow in her mouth. To her credit, they were HUGE pumpkin shaped mallows. lol

Cam as the scarecrow.

Ogre painting. Pistachio pudding in your toes. Yum. :)

The fastest ding dong the witch is dead, EVER.

And I actually don't remember who won.

Beautiful miss Jenna getting in on the action.

OK this was hilarious. Nate and Ashlee bobbed for apples first [not sure where all those pictures went. :(] and Matt sat on the couch the whole time talking about how he was so glad it wasn't him doing it and making fun of them. Guess what he drew next? Bobbing for Apples. Ah, karma! The deal was you had to find the apple that had a quarter in it. [Secret: the quarter weighs down one side and keeps the apple from turning upright so you can't grab it by the stem] Matt cheated and put a quarter from Todd's costume in an apple and grabbed it with his mouth.

So the next time he went down, we doused him with water bottles. lol.

Lori was so great. As soon as she figured out the quarter was still int he bucket, she made sure she got it. Better luck next time Matt!

Joey and Jenna with the Ghost Buster. Oh she was so cute! I love seeing a dad with his little girl.

And then things got a little crazy. oh my gosh these pictures crack me up. Cam [Adam Levine] took his tattoos off and put them over his face.

I haven't laughed this hard in a long time.

We had SO much fun. I can't thank everyone enough for coming and being up for playing with us crazy Calls! I'm so grateful to have such good friends here in Texas.

Never Trust a Woman in a Corset

Hate is a strong word. I get that. I mean it. I hate Halloween. I don't like scary Halloween. I don't like gross things. I don't like food that resembles body parts. Normally, though, I can get past it, dress up and have a good time. This Halloween, we ended up pulled over in a side street with me having a total breakdown. Let's rewind a few hours and I'll explain.

Originally, our little family was going to go as Despicable Me characters. Cam would be Gru, I was going to be Vector [complete with a bowl cut. awesome.] and the boys were to be minions. Well, they don't make hoodies small enough for the boys in bright yellow. We looked everywhere. So we opted out of that idea and during a stroke of genius in the kitchen, we decided we would be the judges from The Voice. 3 guys, 1 girl it was perfect! We made a list of everything we needed and set about finding them for cheap.

We really had no money to spend on costumes this year, so I decided to go as Christina during her dark hair days. [If you don't remember the dark hair days...she was exceptionally trashy. awesome.] For Cam's costume, we drew tattoos on a pair of nylons and he wore them over his arms. Then, he pretty much wore what he always wears. Cam's pretty stylish anyway. It worked great.

I spent the greater part of Friday pulling together the costumes. We found Nash a perfect plaid shirt, black vest, and long dark pants for Blake. He looked super suave and oh so charming.

Gray being Ceelo was the hardest part for me. The only look of Ceelo's I could get into my head was the all white ensemble complete with a white baseball cap. I spent 3 hours trying to make him a white baseball cap. I picked it apart 3 times and tried again when it just didn't fit right. I was losing my mind. Seriously. Just in case you were wondering if it's possible to make a baseball cap out of a cereal box, an old dress shirt and a hair tie...it's not. I had reached a new low. I was laughing so hard at myself. It's one of those times where you just step back and ask "what the heck was I thinking?" I couldn't keep it together. I'm still laughing. I tried to call my mom, because it is her gene that makes me feel like I can make anything. She was teaching piano, so I tried calling Cam. He picked up and I let out this spurt of laughter and explanation that was so loud and fast and hysterical that he had to hang up until I got myself together.

I gave up and found Gray a fantastic pair of red sweats and a red collared shirt. Popped the collar, gave him some sunglasses and we were in business.

Last up, I had to get my costume together. Being that I was Christina Aguilera...who is quite...chesty, I donned tight black pants, a black shirt and, like any logical mother of twins, a teal corset from my lingerie drawer.

Let me remind you that I'm getting dressed for a Church function.

I put on all the jewelry I could handle and more makeup than I think I've ever worn. We got all loaded up and started to drive to the church.

You know in old horror movies where something dons on the main character and the background goes all fuzzy and their eyes get real big? Yep. Lived it.

So, we pull into the parking lot for the trunk or treat and I realize that we have been in young student married wards for so long that we didn't put together that we were in a real family ward now. As in, there are so many kids that the adults must not dress up anymore. [I was wrong about that, but all the adults that were in the parking lot were dressed in normal clothes. The dressed up ones were eating dinner inside.] Either way, in my head all I am seeing is kids dressed up and adults wearing street clothes and I AM WEARING A CORSET.

"Drive Cameron. DO NOT PARK. Drive. DRIVE!"

And it all came crashing down.

One street away, I totally lost it. Sobbing and freaking out about "WHY can't we be normal and just buy animal pajamas for our boys?! We look ridiculous! No one will recognize us, but even if we HAD money for animal pajamas, that wouldn't be right either because we're not animal pajama people! yada yada yada yada yada yada. sob. moan. cry. choke."

Clearly, I was stable.

Cameron somehow got me to laugh at myself. And the situation. And our conversation went a little like this:

Me: OK. I think I'm good. Let's go. I just want to see our friends anyway. Who cares what we're wearing?

C: I think that sounds great. I really want to go.

Me: K. Let's go.

C: Well, your face looks scary.

So we went home and I washed my face and re-applied the make up and grabbed some bottles for the boys. We ended up having a great time. I kept my coat on. We made the kids sing for their candy. It was a blast.

And we went home and watched some well-deserved White Collar. Because that's just how we roll.

When I finally got a hold of my mom she told me to tell Cameron "Never trust a woman in a corset."

Words to live by.

For real. The only picture I took that night. Nash a.k.a. Blake Shelton.

Our "the Voice" pumpkin. Which is almost too good looking to include in such a post.

{And don't worry, the pictures from our annual Halloween Party will show the rest of our costumes. Corset included.}

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Party!

We threw a Halloween party the weekend before Halloween. Our swanky neighbors made these awesome gravestones for our front yard. My favorite is that on Cedric Digory's headstone it says {Team Edward}. Ha. :)

We played a game called Trick or Treat. There was a bowl full of strips of paper that either said "Trick" or "Treat" on them. If you got "Treat" you picked a piece of candy out of the candy bowl. If you picked "Trick," you had to perform a trick in order to get your treat. This would be me putting as many marshmallows in my mouth as possible in an attempt to accomplish the trick: Ghostbuster.

Nasty.

The Mummy.

Donuts on a String.

The Scarecrow: Also known as "General Humiliation." Thanks for being a good sport Jake!

Tommy after bobbing for apples. Took him a while, and he was in almost up to his shoulders before he found the apple with the quarter in it. :)

The Littles. Chris's wife, Emily, is blindfolded and trying to get chocolate syrup into his mouth without bending her knees. Most of the time this is quite messy. These two were way too good at it. Made for a bit of a let-down, but their communication skills were impressive.

Our conjoined twins [Brian & Allison] drawing the best ogre they could using their feet and pistachio pudding.

Not too shabby, eh?

Mario & Princess Peach taking their turn in the apple bobbing bucket.

We had a total blast and will definitely be doing this again! Thanks to everybody who came!

Avatars!

For Halloween this year C and I dressed up as Avatars. I hated that movie. But, I made a deal with C that if he built this, I would be an Avatar. I didn't think it would actually happen, but he had that bed built so fast! And so, I had to hold up my end of the deal.

The only issue was we got as far as face paint and C's wig until the day of the party. C had grabbed his camo stuff from AZ while we were down there in August, but I had NOTHING to wear over my stretchy blue pants [which happen to be C's running tights when it gets cold.] I made a skirt out of an old button up shirt I had and threw on a brown top. A couple of braids later and Bam. Avatar.

It was way too much work to get all painted like that to just go to one party, so after our Halloween Party ended, we headed to BYU campus to liven things up a bit.

We peered through the windows in the library where people were studying, ran from tree to tree and peered out at innocent passers-by, and sometimes ran full force through groups of people just to freak them out. It was wonderfully immature and hilarious.

The highlight of my night was by the freshman dorms. There were these two freshman boys who were doing the swagger walk, like they were all that. I ran full force about a foot away from them and they ran into each other in a total panic trying to get away from me. It was hysterical to watch them try to regain their "cool" stature after squealing like little girls. Bahahaha.

C really embraced the part.

We even paid the security guards in the library a little visit. They informed us that the face paint and the wig classified as a "costume" so they could not allow us into the library. I'm really grateful they were able to tell me that what we were wearing were costumes. We had been unsure up to that point.

Overall, a rousing success of a night. It was a blast!