It's no trick, Alex is 6!

We're up. Alyssa is too excited about California to sleep, and Alex couldn't sleep because he wanted to play with his new toys one time before he has to abandon them. And me, well I can't sleep because I have a jillion things to do today, but since I am not technically supposed to be up yet, I can justify squeezing in a few minutes of blog time.

Yesterday was the big bash. I hit the ground running and still never finished everything I needed to. I went to the 'essentials only' list about an hour before show time and was ready enough to at least pull off a party.

It was so insane. Alex screamed the whole time, and jumped, and ran. It set the tone, and everyone else screamed and jumped and ran. I had to laugh, because I have more control over 70 Primary kids on Sunday than I had over 10 little Halloween monsters. I kept wishing that I could remind them to be reverent, but somehow that didn't seem appropriate for a party.

I felt like everything was more rushed and hectic than I'd hoped, but Alex said it was the best party ever, and really, that is the only endorsement that matters.

I don't have very many good pictures of the actual party. I thought my camera was dying. The pictures before the party were fine, and the ones of the party were blurry, or had bright white ghosty lights in them, or were covered in speckles? Too bizarre. I finally remembered that I had changed the mode while I was outside and trying to get a picture of these silly things.

In that first picture you can't tell they were lit. That is when I changed the mode to night vision and all our camera woes began.

Oh well, at least the camera isn't broken and I will try to show you the not so wacky shots. Let's start with the pre-party set up. These ones were actually taken before I went outside so even if I don't have a great record of the party, I do have record that we at least set up for a party.

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For the first time ever, I was grateful for a ceiling fan. Who puts an ugly ceiling fan over their table? Whoever built our house put one in every room. Barf! When I moved in I said they were all coming down, but so far have only managed to get rid of one of them.

The cheese will make sense in a minute, and the cheetos are because I ended up cutting witch pudding from the menu when I started simplifying. I threw those in a cauldron and called them witch fingers. And aren't those sodas cute? We also had green goblin punch for the kids who don't like soda. As I was putting the leftovers away, I noticed that the Sunkist had caffeine. OOPS! I keep forgetting that, but I counted and all 6 Sunkists were still there. I guess they all preferred the other choices. It would have been funny to send them all home wired on a school night though.

These are the goodies for their treat bags. You will understand why they are not in their bags in a minute.

When the guests arrived, they chose a goody bag and colored it.

And played Halloween plinko.

Or bean bag toss. These games were not structured. I just had them out so the kids had a variety of things to do as they came in.

Then we moved on to dinner. My sister suggested the jack-o-lantern burgers. So easy. I didn't even make burgers. Seth brought a bag of McDonalds burgers home and we plopped the cheese on them. I do wish he'd put the ketchup side down though so that it wouldn't look like our pumpkins are bleeding. Speaking of Seth, after burger duty he called it a night. He is fine with the family parties we do on odd years, but these kid parties are too much insanity for him. When the Hawleys dropped off their girls, Jen said she could stay and help. Seth looked all too happy to leave her to his work, and run out the door with Mike.

After dinner we played Halloween picture bingo with the candy corns that were at their place setting. At the kids request, we played twice, so at least one game was a hit.

For our next game, they had to carry a ping pong eyeball on a spoon, and then drop it off the spoon into the pumpkin without bending. They cheated a bit. I have been using this game as an incentive to help my kids clean up for a week and we have been loving it, but I am not sure it was such a hit last night.

Next we played mummy maker. Each team had a mummy maker, and whoever wrapped their teammates the fastest won. We were ripping and tearing paper all over the place. Alex's friend Alissa (not to be confused with his sister Alyssa-both in this picture) was the only one with a gentle touch and she smoked the competition. If I had it do over again I would use something sturdier than toilet paper.

Here is an example of what the camera was doing.

After games we moved on to what I believe was the favorite part of the night. Trick or treat! They trick or treated around the house and filled their goody bags. I wish Jen had been more generous with the candy bar station because now I am sitting here with a jar full of candy.

While I was setting up, I lost the elastic strings for these masks so they had to just hold them up. Notice the guests were mostly girls? Apparently only girls party on school nights. Alex didn't mind. He was born into a sister sandwich. He is used to girls.

We started presents at 6:28, with an end time of 6:30. I tried to tell the guests to sit down and bring their gifts up one at a time, but this is what I got. He tore through everything in 10 seconds, and I didn't fight it since parents were showing up. Unfortunately, now I have no idea who got him what.

Then we ran to the table since ALL the parents were now waiting. We sang Happy Birthday, no candles or anything.

Then they literally stuffed cupcakes in their faces and off they went.

And now I am off. I have so much to do today, and while I would like to bag cleaning the house, I can't. As soon as Seth drops me off in Chicago, he has to drive straight to Milwaukee to pick up our friend Justin, who is coming to play this weekend (Utah/Notre Dame game). Wish me luck since I am flying solo with my 3 little carry ons. I would be nervous, but I am far too excited. I haven't been to California in 23 months....longest time I have ever been away. Longer than my mission even. I am so excited to see everyone, and I am pretty sure I am going to sneak little Audrey home with me. Be back soon!