As we were leaving preschool last week my preschooler says, “My teacher’s driving away!”  “Yes.  She’s going home”, I said.  “But teachers don’t have homes!”

It’s still a wonder what goes on in their heads, even by the nth child.  He thought they just slept in the building and I think he’s still a bit perturbed that they might have a kitchen/yard/etc that’s not at school.  I’m told this is quite a common misconception, but its still amazing to see/hear things for the first time.

I’m not one who goes all out for Halloween.  But, I do think there are a few things all kids want – a costume, candy, and something to put their loot in.  Mine also care that we do something to decorate our house.  Since I’m not big on decorating in general (there is no Pinterest here), we stick to pumpkins and a few decorations we’ve bought (and kept) over the years.

I’ll talk more about costumes (with pictures) next week.  But today I thought I’d touch briefly on the other Halloween elements.  Namely, I thank Target for their orange pumpkin buckets.  They have other options/colors, but orange pumpkins are what my kids want and they are durable enough that I can keep them year to year (which I do) while cheap enough that I can replace them as needed.  And, the best part is that they never seem to change so as we’ve added more kids/pumpkins there’s little “mine” when they emerge from the closet since they all look the same.  I’m also glad the dollar store has $1 packs of glow sticks/bracelets/necklaces/etc.  At that price I can get one for each kid for when they stray from the flashlight.  And, they stop working promptly that night so there’s no need to save them.

Next year I do need to add a charm or such to each pumpkin so we can keep track of whose candy is whose.  I used to just keep them lined up at their spot on the table.  Amazingly it wasn’t touched.  But, my preschooler has figured out how to eat candy when nobody’s watching so I need a new system.  This year I put a note in each one, but that’s a little hard to deal with.

Considering we’ve had two Halloween storms in recent years (with the resulting school cancellations), we’ve had just incredible weather this week.  This gave us a great opportunity to get out and carve our pumpkins.

This was the first year I wasn’t required to do the whole thing.  I cut the top and did most of the scraping.  But, I got some scraping help, and lots of guts removal help.  Plus, two carved their own pumpkins.  The third I had to carve, but he drew the design.

(I think they look oddly similar.)

The fifth boy does get a lot of hand me downs.  But, here is an outfit that’s all his.  (By kid 5, not all the clothes are salvageable.  He was short pants and fun shirts.)  The shoes are fairly new, but the shirt and pants had the tags off this morning.  How?  Well, all my kids get new everyday shoes.  The pants were an add-on to an order for the older ones.  They were on sale and equaled the shipping that I would have otherwise had to pay.  Better to have new pants.  The shirt was more of a splurge as I went to Old Navy to pick up shirts for my older one, saw this, and bought it.  All were on sale, but I did buy three shirts instead of two.