Grown Up's Costume Party

Our bunch of same-aged people from our ward get together every year for a costume party. 

This one was fantastic.

The Maughn's put it on, and they went all out.  The front was intensely decorated; you had to walk through a smoke-filled spook alley to get through the front door.  (Nobody attempted to spook us when we walked through ... I guess they were more scared of me and my I'm-about-ready-to-go-into-labor look.)   The bathroom was covered in spider webs, bugs, jars of creepy dead rats, and bloody rags.  I loved their attention to detail!

We then talked, ate, voted on costumes, and took very official pictures.  (Mark loved getting so many shots of his undies.)

Greeks, Gnomes, and Where's Waldo

Homeboy and his homegirl ... so funny.

Biggest Loser!

Waldo and Wenda

Garden Gnomes!

Napoleon and Deb!

 And here we have all the costume contest winners.  Mark and I took "Most Original" yet again.  Hopefully Mark has plenty more award-winning childhood memories that we can turn into costumes for years to come.

After this, all of us duty-bound to put our children to bed had to take off.  Those fortunate enough to have theirs in bed or or none at all stuck around and played games till midnight or so ... I was told.

I sure hope every ward we live in does this.

Prepare Yourself ...

This could really gross you out.

But at the same time, it's so incredibly awesome ... don't you think?

I got the idea from this website (found on Pinterest, of course), but made a few changes.  In case you are feeling brave and iron-stomached, here's what you do:

1.  Buy a skull, and get it EARLY.  No stores had any of the cheap Styrofoam ones by the time I got around to doing this.  I ended up with a red candle.  More expensive.
2.  In an effort to save my expensive red skull candle for future use, I wrapped it in tin foil.

3.  I then coated it in cream cheese.  I ended up using three blocks.  It was kinda fun ... it molds just like clay would.
4.  Add some eyes.  You can use hard boiled eggs and olives, or you can cheat and buy eyeballs from the dollar store.  Mold the cream cheese around them.
5.  I could not figure out how to make the teeth stand out, so I just ended up cutting the tin foil off from around the mouth so you could see the candle's nasty red ones. 

6.  Add some delicious raspberry-flavored salsa.  I've heard of one from Costco that is divine ... but I don't have a Costco card and so settled for a Target-version.  It wasn't as tasty as I was hoping it would be.

But the effect is quite disgusting.

I'm usually pretty anti-gore ... but I won't lie, this was kind of fun to do.

Trunk or Treat

Trunk-or-treat is the way to go here in Cali.  Apparently some people still do the actual door-to-door Trick or Treating around here, but it's not quite like it was back in good old Logan.

Our ward decided to host their trunk-or-treat a week early, so we have been busily scrambling to come up with some pretty sweet costumes.  I really wanted to work my enormous abdomen in somehow, but it was difficult to come up with something fun, unique, that Mark would be excited about, and Mac could have fun with.  Those are a lot of requirements to fill.

We tossed around Braveheart, skeletons, street fighters, and countless others.  It seemed like one of our crew was always left out.  So we decided that if anyone should have to wait, it would be baby sister.  Sorry girlie.

As it turned out, she did add to our ensemble quite a bit.

Everyone wanted Doug Funny and Patty Mayonnaise to live happily ever after, right?

Mac loved his "Puppy Shirt", but he was not so crazy about having his dog-eared hood or belt-crown on his head.  He did however, love the party.  The kids running around, the delicious treats, and the "Un-Talent Show" all had him clapping and saying, "wow."  He loved seeing the dancing and the songs.  I loved the Luhm girls.  Mark loved the Goonies skit.

We then hustled outside to prepare our trunks for the Primary kiddos.

And voila: a safer, faster, easier version of one of childhood's greatest events.

Mac didn't really catch on, but he was sure excited about all the candy we had left over.

I have mixed feelings.

Mostly I wish that there were about double the number of kids in Primary ...