The Alvarez Family: A Very Late Weekend Recap and Happy Halloween!

Ok so I started this post several weeks ago and then life got in the way. Long story short, after much debate we decided to put our house on the market and look for a new home with a bigger yard for the girls and Riley. We of course decided to do this mid-October, spent two weeks putting things in storage, fixing a few things, and staging the house to go on the market Nov. 10th. And this was right in the middle of report card time for me, one kid was sick, conferences were coming up, my birthday was 10 days later, we had the open house, Thanksgiving, and Ben was sick too. So we've been busy the past month with the house and trying to get everyone well and blogging fell to the way-side. So just do me a favor and pretend it's right after Halloween, okay? :) I'll be spending Thanksgiving weekend doing all my blog posts to get all caught up!

Happy Halloween everybody! You know the drill by now, life is busy and chaotic and I always post stuff belatedly so here you go!

I kicked off the Halloween weekend by dressing up with my coworkers as Harry Potter! Our PTA is doing a HP theme this year and we all LOVE Harry Potter so we dressed up as him and had so much fun waving our wands at all of the kiddos.

The pumpkins we created for the PTA Fall Festival...Harry Potter, Hedwig, and the Golden Snitch!

Me and my intern, Danielle

The girls and I kicked off the Halloween weekend with my school's PTA Fall Festival. The PTA puts on a free festival for the kids with games, prizes, bake sale, a painted pumpkin raffle (pumpkins are created by staff members), and a trunk or treat set up out front in the bus loop. Ben politely declined so that he could have some video game time :)

Saturday was spent cleaning and picking up around the house before heading off to a Superhero birthday party for our friend Charlie! Natalie & Noelle enjoyed running around the backyard and swinging on the swingset. We left the party a little early because it was past nap time and we had two cranky kids so we headed home and as soon as we got home Natalie threw up. Sure enough she had a fever so the rest of the evening was spent trying to make her comfortable and keeping Noelle away from her...not the easiest thing to do!

I was supposed to work in the Totzone at church on Sunday but ended up cancelling to take care of our sick pumpkin. Ben's aunt & uncle were in town fro TX so Noelle and I managed to sneak away for a bit to see them while Natalie stayed home with Ben. Natalie was still sick Monday so she ended up not being able to go trick-or-treating for the first time which made me so so sad :( She ended up being sick for a whole week! Praise God that Noelle did not catch it, whatever it was. Ben also managed to be diagnosed with bronchitis at the same time. It was crazy!

Noelle and I went trick-or-treating to a few houses in the neighborhood. I pulled her in the wagon, which she LOVED, and she quickly realized that taking candy from strangers was really fun, haha! It only took her one house to realize these people were giving her things to put in her pumpkin and since the houses we went to knew her sister was home sick, they gave her double to take home and share, which really meant double for Ben and me!

We stayed out about an hour and when we got home, Noelle did not want to get out of the wagon. We tried to take her pumpkin so she could climb out and she was NOT having it. She threw a fit when we said it was time to go in so I guess it is safe to say she enjoyed trick-or-treating! Once we got her inside we let her check out the candy and she chose fruit snacks to eat before bed. Thankfully we were able to sneak her in without waking up her sister.

Having fun trick-or-treating!

The look you give when Daddy says it times to go in.

"Cheeeeese"

I felt so bad that I didn't get any pictures of Natalie in her costume that after she was feeling better I dressed them both up again and got some pictures for our yearly album. I didn't want Natalie to wonder why she didn't have any Halloween pictures some day!