This year we skipped Halloween.

We didn’t mean to, of course.

As it inched forward I kept thinking to myself that I better get busy pulling out the Halloween boxes.

But we were slow and life was filling in every cranny. And no one asked, “hey mom, where are those spiders that don our light fixtures?” No one was pouring their guts into the decision of what they should be for Halloween. We were just running to keep up with life.

Dear young mothers, THIS is what happens when your kids grow up!!

Ok, maybe not to everyone, but that’s what I kept thinking to myself as I ran around trying to keep up with life, wondering if we could get our act together in time for Halloween.

It wasn’t that the kids weren’t excited for Halloween…Claire had big plans with stars in her eyes, and Lucy kept pouring over how to maneuver the big party her friends had planned and whether she wanted to go or not (she doesn’t love big group gatherings).

And THEN Claire and I had an opportunity to take a college volleyball recruiting trip to New York over Halloween weekend that we decided we couldn’t pass up (a pretty incredible opportunity, so much more about that soon!).

We were able to maneuver the flights so that we could be back just in time for some celebrating.

And THEN, as we were walking to our gate at the airport, done with that adventure, our hearts and minds filled with so much good information from that trip, our flight was cancelled.

Yep, just like that, I got a notification on my phone with a big yellow circle around the word “cancelled” and we joined the throng of frustrated passengers filling up the whole terminal trying to re-route.

Oh, there are so many details about that that I will spare in this post, but for today I will just say we were flying through the night of Halloween (thanking our lucky stars to be on a flight at all, since the first available switch was for Tuesday…today!) and it was skipped. Tucked away until next year.

That is, until in my bleary-eyed state of late-night travel as the girls were getting ready for school the next morning (yesterday) that I proclaimed we weren’t cancelling Halloween after all, and that for dinner that night we were going to rewind time and have our own Halloween family celebration. Everyone had to come dressed up.

And we did:

Ha! Dave’s outfit was especially creative, don’t you think?

But Bo’s outfit was the one that made us the happiest:

(Ha!)

As you can tell, she adored wearing that thing for her five minutes as a mermaid:)

I whipped up our traditional Halloween chicken corn chowder:

(Not a food-critic worthy photo, but that stuff is GOOD! The new and improved recipe is over HERE.)

We all approved quite whole-heartedly.

See how Mr. Bones actually made an appearance up there behind Lucy? And see that book on the table? IT IS AWESOME! I’ll do a whole post about it soon, but you can find it HERE.

Yeah, he had a little mishap this year getting tripped over at the ward Trunk-or-Treat, but he got a little duct tape fix-up and he’s as good as new again 🙂

We did our own version of trick-or-treating, if anyone wanted a piece of candy they had to say a fav. Halloween memory:

By this time I had changed my dress-up outfit to be “Claire” instead of an 80s girl for the comfort of it all:)

And I proceeded to carve our lonely pumpkin that was waiting to be carved as we all talked. And the girls even turned out the lights for the candle-photo effect:

Even got the traditional pumpkin pose that we always do that Dave felt I should be a part of. Haha.

It was a good night.

No, not all the hype that usually surrounds Halloween, but a velvety-beautiful night as a family.

Which will have to serve us as enough this time around.

We cleared everything up and whipped up our Thankful tree and here we go:

Off to Thanksgiving!

Vintage Family Halloween Posts going down Memory Lane:

The first Halloween recorded on this blog (2007)

Halloween 2008

Halloween 2011

(I need to figure out those Photobucket things)

Halloween the year we lived in China

Halloween 2016

Oh, the memories! I could go on and on, but there’s a wrap for Halloween 2021!

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11 Comments

  1. I love it! Any day celebrating and spending time with family is a good day!! What is the flip book on your table that explains acknowledging adults? That looks helpful.

  2. Yes I was also curious about the “acknowledging adults” on the table! Please share, my teens probably need that, haha.

  3. WOW–seeing these Halloween pics from years past makes me realize I’ve been following your blog since 2007!!! How is that possible??!!! I don’t even know you but by reading your blog I’ve learned A LOT about being present and intentional with my own family. I just can’t believe it’s been FOURTEEN years!!! Happy Fall, y’all!!

    1. Happy Fall to you as well! I cannot believe how fast time flies, so glad you’ve been along for the ride!
      xoxo

  4. Yes, time flies so fast! Thanks for sharing your light and life with us through the years.

    Random question: what are the gorgeous paint colors on your kitchen and fireplace room walls?

  5. I have to show this post to my family! We literally had the same type of holiday. It was a busy couple of weeks and nobody was asking about Halloween stuff so I let it go. Saturday night one child threw together a costume to trick or treat – he did not even care what he was. That was our only costume of the whole season! That has never happened! Then suddenly Sunday night we decided we better carve pumpkin. Singular. I had bought ONE just in case anyone decided they cared about the tradition. We have been laughing all this week, “Everyone come over! We are carving pumpkin!” I made them stand on the porch with pumpkin so we’d remember the year Halloween got away from us.

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