Seth's 15th Birthday and Halloween 2017

Gideon spends a lot of time in the car, and he is finally learning it is not purgatory and it is temporary. His recent interest in toys is helping.

Shopping with multiple girls....I'd rather have to drive with Gideon screaming.

Alee was shopping for flats (we needed one pair for school and one for church since she ruins shoes like a pro). We did find flats...but these were also a "necessary" purchase. What a girl!

Gideon, like all of my babies have, loves to look at himself in the mirror. I think his little tongue here is so cute!

He is a generally happy baby and lets us pass him around when he's not hungry or tired.

Again, the tongue = happiness!

Yep, everything goes to his mouth.

Guess who is 15 now??

Gideon's shirt says "Cool like my bro", and he is cool. Seth's so laid back and really puts up with having 4 sisters pretty well. He's a good kid and not too hard of a teenager so far. He reads his scriptures and wants to do good. He'll do anything he's asked (as long as he can remember what it was?) 

Rob's mom gave him a hard foam plane thing, which the whole family got into after a few minutes.

 Some toys bring out the child in us.

My kids found a way to save a few steps up and down the stairs.

  The tail wings were put on in such a way that it did loops as soon as you threw it.

Traditional Venus birthday celebration - Seth chose Chinese this year.

Home Birthday with just us - his cake (above) was oreo and he got a Duncan yoyo and a Dungeons and Dragons book. (I didn't understand it at first and was unsure, but I've seen him play with friends and it's just them making up stories and rolling dice to decide how the story plays out. They sit around the table and talk and record information on paper and there are no screens involved!) His other present was a little finger eyeball toy he wanted to play with Gideon. (He has one other gift, but it's a room arrangement thing that has to wait until after the girls' birthday.)

I need to get a picture of him playing his ocarina (from my mom). It's an instrument you blow into (popular from The Legend of Zelda video game character). Of course, that's all I needed was some more noise in this house! He can already play a few songs on it. The sound reminds me of a recorder.

It's his turn for a friend party this year, so Friday evening I'll have about 7 teenage boys here. I'm glad it's his turn. With a 4 month old, boys who just want to eat and play games and hang out is SO much easier than girls who want a theme and decorations and planned activities.

On to Halloween!

Halloween was lower priority this year. I love costumes, but I had to keep things simple this year. And our church party didn't involve costumes, so with one fewer opportunity to wear costumes, I had less motivation to be awesome.
I did try my best with the elementary girls since it's important to them. And Carolyn pretty much took care of 2 more. Seth's is barely a costume.

Carolyn made Gideon a dragon costume.

She is a unicorn. She made hers herself too.

Natalie is a phoenix. (It's a bird; mythological theme continues.)

I should have zoomed in on her eye makeup. It's harder than it looks to do makeup for costumes! I did well enough.

Changing from mythological creatures over to pop culture...
Kaitlyn is Mal from Descendants 2 (Disney movie about the descendants of classic characters. Mal is the daughter of Maleficent. She decides to be good in the first movie and then has to overcome a few more obstacles in that decision in #2.)

(This is before I finished painting the jacket. In the future, I think I will sew a jacket before I paint one!)

Finished costume; didn't have enough pink hair spray left to make her hair as pink as it was for dance class in the previous picture.

Alee is Uma, also from Descendants 2. (Uma is daughter of Ursula the sea witch in The Little Mermaid. She's the villain in this movie, but she's a villain with fun songs. She's a pirate in human form, but can also be a giant octopus like her mother.)

We splurged on the hat and the gloves (which are now awesome dress up items). The shoes, shirt, and vest came from Once Upon a Child (consignment), the sword from dollar tree, and the bracelets from cheap craft section of Walmart. The blue dress was in the give away pile; I rescued it to work for the costume. We cut it and pulled the strips to look like fringe.

Here's our costume inspiration for those two:

Seth's character, Lucas, is from a video game. (I saw in my google search for his character Mario smash bros, so maybe? I think it's a Wii game?)

Inspiration:

(He wanted temporary blond hair dye. Sorry, no such thing.)

Since Will and Madyson were here, they are in the picture too. Will told Kaitlyn who asked what his costume was that he was a tired corporate worker.

Seth stayed with Rob to pass out candy. We only trick-or-treated on our street and two houses around the corner.

I'm pretty sure none of my older neighbors knew who half my kids were supposed to be, and the others they probably guessed wrong. But the kids were all happy; their costume dreams were fulfilled.

Glad that holiday is over; ready to see the Halloween themed decorations disappear from yards all around our neighborhood. (Some are creepy.)