halloween and other things

i've been home today with kaleb, and what a sweet time for me, but what an awful time for him - he's battling croup, a horrible cold, and all that led to pink eye. his eye looks awful!

but he's been a great helper this afternoon in the craft room. we've hung a shelf (one that i swore i'd never hang again after it was in ellie's room in the fbg house...it took forever to hang and left massive holes. i think it went better this time around) and a curtain rod, and wrapped our first christmas present. kaleb's favorite part was getting out all the tools to hang the shelf and rod with. 

and then i got ready to get the pictures from my camera to the computer and realized i hadn't transferred the halloween pics over yet - which means they haven't been shared! it's been a crazy couple of weeks...

the kids got to dress up for school on halloween, but took a spare outfit to change into after the costume parade. i went to work a bit late to make sure there were no wardrobe malfunctions...especially since kaleb's pants were homemade. i've never before made a pair of pants and i had that feeling that they were going to rip down the seam to moment he stepped into them. that happened later in the day.

ellie and the la-loopsy that inspired her costume standing with ellie's pumpkin.

argh matey! kaleb and his pumpkin. never could get one of him looking at the camera with a good expression on his face...

and one of him just getting started trick-or-treating. he used his sack to collect the acorns along our front walk before putting candy in there from the other houses. my friend, katie, and her family walked over from the next street over, and we trick-or-treated with them.

about 2/3 of the way down the block, we saw lights and a little commotion, and thought, "ooh, cool...the people in the cul-de-sack must have a halloween block party." and about 2 houses later, we realized that that was no block party but rather a city of austin sanitation truck trying to fix a sewer problem...it was shooey!

when walking up to the last house, ellie caught her toe on the driveway and took a hard fall forward, catching herself on her elbow and knees. she screamed (wailing for the entire street to hear) uncontrollably. we dusted her off, katie offered their stroller for ellie to sit in, but the sweet tooth she has wouldn't let her stop...through the sobs she got out she wanted to go up to the last house. so we did. with many tears. and were rewarded with not one but two handfuls of candy. just what she needed :)

we made it home to find she had a pretty good strawberry and knot on her elbow, and despite first impressions of a possible break, it is healing just fine without any treatment beyond bandaids. lots and lots of bandaids. for 10 days after the event.

pretty fun night out, actually. and i think ellie just as much enjoyed passing out our treats to the kids who stopped by as she did collecting treats of her own. she'd answer the door and put some in each kids' bag while i held the bucket. she is so sweet!