Sunday, October 27, 2013

Spooky Smiths 2013


Such a fun family tradition! We look forward to this party every year and I have found I can take tons of pics of my dressed up darlings during this party rather than try to fit in lots of photos on Halloweem night—simplifies things quite a bit and I love the lighting.

These kids just keep growing up way too fast! Love the Watson and Sherlock duo, the cute superhero brothers, my very tall "baby" Livs, and the world's most adorable dragon. I was slightly obsessed with him last night and so proud of him for actually keeping his costume on! 

Bentley has his big cousin brothers in Ethan and Will and lucky Luke has Connor and Brigg. These boys are the funniest together and Luke is getting old enough to start playing along.

We always love the "hay-ride" through the my parents' neighborhood. We lucked out with the most beautiful night. I think it was still 60 degrees as we rode around and it felt crisp and cool but not at all cold. And the sunshine made the fall leaves so vividly bright. 

 Dragon in the leaves!

 This neighbor's maple has been a great find the past 2 years—always a huge stash of leaves on the grass and just the right amount of sunlight peeking through for some pretty pictures.

 Joseph had some fun with Brigg's Ironman mask (even though he was officially Batman/Bat-Dad that night).
 Papa Sherm and Luke

Our little family all dressed up (sadly no theme this year as the kids were very decided on their witch, baby and clone trooper costumes. Maybe we could have made something out of those?... But Bentley begged Joseph to be Batman when they saw the costume one night so I tried to play along as Catwoman...and we already had that kitty mask!)

Of course we had our delicious meal of spider jell-o, mummy hot-dogs, orange and black veggies and chips, and then Cec and Chad made chicken and white bean soup and cornbread that was soooo yummy. We even ate outside this year without needing much more than a sweater or long layer on! Why didn't I grab a picture of that? It was beautiful out there. Glad my kids had warm costumes on as they played outside a ton on the play-set and in the yard. Once it was getting dark we came inside for "pin the bow-tie on the skeleton" and some Halloween "feel boxes" full of Tarantula Legs (pipe cleaners), Monster Eyeballs (sticky rubber eyeballs from Target) Serpent's Dinner (mini rubber rats) and Mummy Fingers (mini carrots wrapped in toilet paper strips).


I know this party takes a ton of effort, especially from my hosting parents and my sis making the "grown-ups" a yummy meal. Somehow Mr. Bones doesn't seem to compare (and let's be honest, Joseph made him not me!) Love those amazing people in my life and I'm grateful my whole family loves and adores them as much as I do. Happy Halloween!!

4 comments:

Bobbi said...


Although I guess we spent nearly all day getting ready for the party, this fun fest never feels like "work"! It's just so fun! (Although Sherm hates the chocolate fountain clean up {understandably} as it takes a long time to get all those parts cleared of the gooey chocolate.) We love hosting it and getting to see all the kids in costume before the big (and too busy) day. Thanks to Joseph and Livs for assembling the mummy dogs. She was quite good at it for such a little one. The ghost pretzels were v. cute, nice job!

Bobbi said...

And thanks, too, for the games!

Anonymous said...

You were awesome to make the games and those adorable pretzels! I didn't do anything crazy. Such a fun party and so fun to be together as cousins.

Heidi said...

funnest cousin party ever! I hope we can come to it again someday. I want to see Luke playing with the big boys, I was dying over him and Brigg crawling in the garden.

reading mom's comment I did not even know they had a chocolate fountain- I am really missing out!