Halloween 2017

'Twas the night of All Hallow's Eve

Before the day of the dead and bereaved

When all throughout the house of Jolley

Existed not a single citizen of Bali.

And I'm done with that. That's clearly not going anywhere.

The morning of Halloween, I decided to dig deeeeeeeeeeeep into my heart--past the girl who doesn't want to do anything out of the routine, even steering around the girl who doesn't want a mess in the kitchen--and tried to be a fun mom. 

I made orange-colored pancakes and was going to make jack-o-lantern faces with chocolate chips, but discovered we are out of chocolate chips. Which, at the Jolley house, is equivalent of being out of water. How did I let that happen?

So I decided to use m&m's instead, which meant that they didn't resemble faces at all, but just blobby messes. That no one even wanted to eat.

I took a sharpie to the toilet paper and made a ghost face. This was also only fun to a point because a certain older and more rigid child of mine grew very upset anytime anyone actually used said toilet paper because the ghost would disappear. So I kept re-drawing the ghost until I got smart and announced to everyone that the toilet paper roll on the dispenser was just for looking at and to use another roll I had put on top of the toilet for any practical needs.

Upon reflection, I didn't need to do a single thing to set a Halloween-worthy spooky tone at our house because I woke up to a crime scene.

I should back up and explain that I went to bed on Monday night at 7:00 p.m. because I felt totally and utterly ill. It's either allergies or something else sinus-related, but at the very least it's what I term a "toilet paper roll cold." You know the kind--where you have to actually carry an entire roll of toilet paper in your purse (or even to traverse the various rooms of your home) just to be able to keep up with the constant flow from your nose. Sorry, gross.

To add insult to injury, Dan accidentally bought one ply the last time he was out. One. Ply. I think he's dancing dangerously close to breaking marriage vows, but I'm trying to be understanding since every time I go out to get milk, I come back with a family size pack of peanut butter m&m's and no milk.

So I went to bed as the girls played and Dan worked downstairs late into the night. He was a dear and put the girls to bed and then just kept working. Which means that I woke up to find what appeared to be a murder/homicide scenario of our all our toys and possessions strewn across the floor and upon every open surface in the house. Way scarier than any slasher film.

This picture doesn't even come close to communicating what the rest of the house looked like, but it's a good photo for a game of "Spot the Harris."

So we spent the morning not eating our ugly, orange pancakes and not using our ghost toilet paper but did try to clean up the house while listening to Halloween music on Pandora.

And then June turned into a vampire and bit Gwen really hard right before the bus came.

That afternoon, Gwen and Harris and I headed over to June's school for her Halloween parade. You can see her pink wig poking through here.

There's my girl! Princess Poppy from Trolls. The wig bothered her a ton so it was often that she would wear it sideways to keep the pink bangs out of her eyes.

Gwen was also dressed like Princess Poppy, and was dying to participate in the parade. Luckily, June's teacher's aide saw this and took pity on her and took her around with June.

 Later that night, we went trick or treating with some neighbors.

One of the houses we stopped by.

My neighbor and her daughter love going trick or treating but don't have any little kids left in their house. So they asked to tag along with us, and they ended up doing most of the work. I followed behind and took pictures.

And that's a wrap. Happy Halloween!