Halloweening (and why my husband is the coolest guy ever)

We had a great Halloween this year! This was the first time in three years that we weren't constructing costumes in the evening right before it was time to go out. It was such a relief to not have a hectic (or too hectic, I should say) Halloween.

Benjamin started the day off by strapping on his tool belt and heading down the street to his friend Jada's Halloween birthday party!


I cut and re-sewed the t-shirt down to size for Benjamin (just don't look at it too closely). It was one that Paul got from work, and it made a perfect shirt for a trick-or-treating construction man with the reflective strips on front and back. Paul and I also worked together to create the tool bags. Paul designed and I sewed, and altogether I think Benjamin went out with a pretty cool get-up.

I should backtrack. Thursday night we carved jack-o-lanterns! Benjamin is just old enough now to get involved in the process. Here he's helping me get the guts out of my pumpkin. Then he helped Paul carve a nice face and a John Deere logo on another pumpkin.


Rhett's participation was quite a bit more limited. Basically he was miserable the whole time because we kept taking the knives away from him and he couldn't get up on the table.


Friday night we had "mummy dogs" for dinner. I saw the idea on a blog, but now I can't find which one. Thanks for the idea, whoever you are.


We did the mummy dogs the day before because on Halloween we had our traditional Duersch family chili-in-a-pumpkin!


Then it was time to jump into costumes and head off to the ward trunk-or-treat. This was they boys' first trick-or-treating experience. Last year Rhett was a wee little baby and both boys fell asleep on the way to the Halloween carnival.

It was a little overwhelming for them at first, and neither of them really knew what to do. Benjamin got the idea after a while, but he wouldn't go anywhere without me because he was so intimidated by it all.

Rhett screamed the whole time. He wasn't crying or scared. That's just how he handles just about every emotion right now. He screams. Loudly. I think in this case he was just overwhelmed.

(Rhett's recycled BYU football player costume from 2007)

So why is my husband the coolest ever?

Take a look.

He built it in just a couple of days with some help from Tool Man Benjamin. And while Paul won't rave about it, I have to say that it was the hit of the trunk-or-treat! A real door to knock on instead of a bowl of candy sitting in a car trunk? What could be better? Paul even had a peep-hole so he could watch people from inside. Most of the little kids liked to knock on the door, but several of the older, pre-teenish ones were sure that something would jump out and scare them so they wouldn't knock on it. Next year (if we do it again) we'll make it a bit more welcoming with a "please knock" sign and a step for kids to stand on to reach the door.

We took two sticky-fingered, sugar-pumped kids home and gave most of the rest of our candy to the five trick-or-treaters who came by our house. (Really, it's pathetic how few kids come trick-or-treating down our street.) Rhett was wasted but so high on sugar that it took a lot of chasing, hide-and-seek and tickling to burn everyone out.


It was a fun day! Hope yours was too!