The Bunch Celebrate Halloween and Have Our First Basketball Tournament

 

The Cowboy, the Queen of Hearts, and Agnes (Despicable Me)

As the kids get older, Halloween has become more scaled down. Now they just dress up for my Halloween calendar pic and prefer watching our classic Halloween shows while eating our traditional Halloween food. I bet you didn't know Halloween had it's own food did you? In our house, it has become tradition to eat pizza. This started because when the kids were little it was quick and easy to make them dinner after taking them trick or treating. Unbeknownst to me, it apparently became a tradition that now must occur every Halloween. Whatever, it's easy. It's weird how much the kids like everything the same. They're like  a bunch of 90 year old men! They REALLY don't like change. This year I upped the anty and also made a fruit pizza for dessert. It is one of our favorite desserts. The crust is made from one of the best sugar cookie recipes I have ever seen and the sauce is a cream cheese/powder sugar mix. The toppings are fresh berries, pineapple, bananas, and apples. It is so yummy! The first 3 years we lived out here the kids went trick or treating. The neighbors were so excited when we did because they hadn't had trick or treaters in 6 years! The past 3 years they have not gone trick or treating so we haven't had ANY trick or treaters. Young families are starting to move in so I keep thinking maybe this year we will have some, but we still haven't. I still buy candy (lots of it) just in case though. After we don't get any trick or treaters, the kids divide up the candy. It's almost as good as if they went out and got it themselves. We just eat our pizza and watch our Halloween shows together. The kids insist we watch Monsters vs Aliens Halloween, Scared Shrekless, and, of course, Disney's Ichabod Crane. I think they like always doing the same thing every year because it comforts them and reminds them of their childhood.

Everyone at A's work dressed up as Alice in Wonderland characters. It was a really cute idea and the staff and clients had a lot of fun.

The fruit pizza. A doesn't like bananas so they have to stay far away from her slices. God forbid if they should touch anything she is eating. Same with eggs.

I made the cat and T did the vampire pumpkin.

She wore her costume to choir rehearsal with her friends.

This reminds me of a John Wayne photo.

It actually took A quite awhile to do her makeup like she wanted for her character.

Gwenie thought I was feeding the kids something good while I took their pics, so I showed her it was just my phone. She still didn't believe me. 

L made these to share with her choir friends.

Oh, basketball tournaments! They are T's favorite times. He gets to watch basketball with his friends, play basketball with his friends, and be completely absorbed in all things basketball for a whole weekend. I hate it for all those same reasons! Imagine a giant warehouse with 6-10 full basketball courts going non stop for two full days with constant games, whistle blowing, people everywhere yelling, and stinky sweaty teens running around. You combine that with hours of sitting on metal bleachers and you get an idea of what tournament weeks are like. For someone like me who thinks the radio playing in the car is too much stimuli, these are rough. 900 basketballs bouncing at different rates for two full days can drive even a normal person insane! D went with us this year and I tried to get him to bring a couch pillow to sit on. He scuffed and didn't want to. I proudly brought my couch pillow. I know too well what it feels like after not having a pillow. The pillow IS the difference between your back being in unbearable pain or bearable pain. It won't feel "good" or "normal" no matter what. With that much sitting on metal, it's just impossible. One day I am going to get us a couple of nice memory foam pads to sit on. After one day, he proudly carried his pillow to the tournament. Nothing is worth your back feeling that bad! Unfortunately, T's team lost their first game so we moved to the losers bracket. However, the team we played was the number one seed and they were crazy big. Some of the kids that played in the 14U also played up on their 18 U team. They were that crazy good! Basically, they slaughtered us. However, we won ALL the rest of our games and are officially now the Best of the Second Best at that tournament! 😂

 We play Bonham next week and we look forward to visiting with C.

T played a lot during these games. They are using him more as a defender so he probably will not be Offensive Player of the Year this year. He did sink a beautiful 3 pointer in one game though and still managed to get at least 2 baskets in every game.

Tournaments are so loud.

Me sitting by myself in the car for an hour just because it was quiet. I was so tired! We came home on the last day and we all were out cold by about 9 pm!