Halloween 2020

It has been really hard for me to keep up on blogging this year.  Having the kids doing remote learning has been keeping me pretty busy.  I've been working on this post for over a month.  Just doing what I can do right now.

We had some Halloween fun this year.  It's different because of Coronavirus but we still had some good fall fun.  Emma got to have a little kindergarten pumpkin patch event.  The kids came one at a time to a little pumpkin patch set up at the school.  They got to pick a little pumpkin and talk to their teacher for a few minutes.

Here's Emma waiting to go into the little pumpkin patch area.

Matthew and Anna got to dress up and do a drive by canned food drop off at their school.  They also got a little treat from the school.  Matthew was Dr. Strange and Anna was an Air Force airman.

Grant, John and Emma had a similar Halloween drive by event.  They got to wave to their teachers and get a little bag of goodies from the school.  Grant dressed up as Dobby from Harry Potter, Emma was Sleeping Beauty and John was Prince Philip from Sleeping Beauty.

A couple weeks before Halloween we went to a local pumpkin patch.  I reserved tickets online because it said that was required.  When we got to the place there were a ton of people.  I don't think they were turning anyone away.  I had already paid otherwise we might have just left, but it was outdoors and we were masked so we just tried to stay away from people.  Here we are on a hay ride.

Emma picked out a gigantic pumpkin.  Maybe we should have made a rule that you must be able to lift your pumpkin.

Pumpkin searching

Our tickets price included one pumpkin (any pumpkin) a piece.  So we ended up with a wheelbarrow plus of pumpkins.

Taking all our pumpkins back on the hay ride

hay pyramid

small maze

Washing the pumpkins

Inside the corn maze

It was fun but too crowded

Later we carved the pumpkins

Most of the kids are old enough to do a lot on their own

John was proud of his pumpkin

We made some Halloween sugar cookies

The kids helped decorate

Emma all ready to go for Halloween

We didn't trick or treat because of COVID but we left some bags of candy out in a basket if any trick or treaters came by

Our lit up pumpkins

Instead of trick or treating we did some carnival activities at home

I didn't get a lot of pictures but we had a corn hole came and some different ball toss type things.  It was fun.  We did dangling donuts.

Ring toss - we also had a bottle toss came where you try to knock down the bottles

Tossing these monster balls into some cups

Duck derby - I bought some different party supplies from Oriental Trading.  I drew a star on the bottom of some of these ducks (winners) and was going to let the kids pick one to see if it was a winner.  Not all the ducks would float upright so we had to adjust the game (I think we ended up using blind folds).  Later the kids found that filling them with a little water made all the ducks turn upside down.  Fun.

I think we did a pin the nose on the jack o lantern thing too.

Here is Emma bobbing for apples.

Here we are dressed up

Anna was an Air Force airmen (same as last year), Grant was Dobby from Harry Potter, Matthew was Dr. Strange (same as last year), Emma was Sleeping Beauty, John was Prince Phillip from Sleeping Beauty and I was Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty.

Here I am getting stabbed by Phillip/John

Instead of trick or treating we did an activity where the kids went around to different rooms and places in the house to find hidden candy bags in each place.  They went around together as a group.  The grand finale was a Halloween Easter egg hunt in the dark back yard.  I felt bad that Halloween had to be different this year so I tried hard to make it fun anyway.  Some kids said it was better than trick or treating so that's a win.  We might do the carnival games again next year, but I'll be happy to go back to regular trick or treating, especially on our cute little street here.  So Halloween was successful!