A rollercoaster of a week for us, when Dempsey turned SIX, Lydia tested positive for Covid and Joey and I scrambled around trying to celebrate one and take care of the other, while also maybe being sick 🤪 Everyone was basically back on the mend by Friday, so we could attend both Halloween festivities and birthday parties. Please don’t let the other shoe (the shoe being Dempsey) drop this week! 🤲

I let Joey take over bike bus duty on Friday even though it hurt my heart but at least he has good enough balance to snap a few pictures (I never even try!) and once Lydia was up, I got her dressed and headed over to Grandma’s. Why’s she such a dream?? Post-work/school, Chad, Lori and I took Demps, Lydi and Delaney over to the pumpkin drop, which is always so fun and cool! Once Joey was home, we all headed over to the trunk-or-treat at Lydia’s school. They posed SO NICE for me! We ran into a few kids from Dempsey’s first year of preschool and LOL at these kids looking each other right in the face and saying they don’t remember each other 😂😂 Back at home, we had dinner and watched The Bad Guys Haunted Heist — Dempsey proceeded to tell us all the plot twist as we watched it 😂 — and AFTER the kids went to bed, Joey and I watched Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Look, it not NOT scary/disturbing, but why’s the acting so stilted?? Just felt off and not on purpose. At least I can say I’ve seen it now.

On Saturday, the kids had a 9 AM birthday party to attend in Highlands Ranch, so we were up and at em! I took them because I love to chat with the other preschool parents while the kids play and so Joey could bake Dempsey’s birthday cake. We all had a good time at the party but the 40 minute drive home was a lot of backseat fighting and yelling of “Mommy doesn’t like me!” so that was fun. Made a quick stop at the library to return/pick up books and then I drove off with those book on the roof of my car. Luckily, I realized it pretty quickly but that’s NOT the first time I’ve done that 🫠 We got the house cleaned up and decorated and Dempsey spent like an hour and a half outside setting up his display for the party 🥹 I made us pizza for dinner and then we got the kids to bed and watched GBBO!

Sunday was party day! 11 AM could not come fast enough for the kids. Joey and I had enough time to finish up decorations and get the cake frosted and we were all dressed and ready in plenty of time. Dempsey even did his own hair 😂 Just kids running through the house screaming, but more importantly, just entertaining each other! Joey surprised Dempsey by stringing light up eyes through the skull cake he made and the look on his face when he saw was priceless! Wish I’d gotten a video of all the kids pounding the table and chanting “CAKE! CAKE! CAKE!” 😅 I thought it was going to be really chilly outside, but it warmed up by the time we headed out for the piñata 🙌 Most people headed out by 2, so a handful of us went outside to launch a rocket Dempsey got from Aunt Bean and Uncle Wayne and I laughed so hard at how high up it went in the sky 😂😂 Spent the rest of the afternoon making pork green chili and salads for the week while the kids rested and played. We all ate dinner then headed back out for a “campfire” and s’mores with the neighbors. I had bought the supplies for the party then totally forgot, so this was all Dempsey wanted that night!

We have an insanely busy week, so I’m hoping we can all stay well and not lose our minds in the process, but that full moon is not reassuring! Happy Monday and Happy Halloween!

What a weekend we had! Chock-full of Halloween festivities, including Glow at the Gardens, the South Broadway Halloween Parade, SIX hours at Anderson Farms, plus some fun Halloween food and movies too. It was all really wonderful and I’m feeling fully in the spirit heading into this week, when my son will be turning 6 (how?!?!) and we get to celebrate skeleton-style at his party this weekend!

Why does the seven hours between when I drop Dempsey off at school and when I pick him up on Friday always go so fast?? And it took me four of those to finally warm up from our bike bus ride 😅 I ran errands, worked, worked out, cleaned up and then made a fun Halloween dinner for all of us before we headed out to the Botanic Gardens. Emily had sent me this hot dog ghost idea and they turned out so cute and festive! I felt borderline sick after eating the third one but Dempsey told me it was the best dinner ever 🥰

Afterward, the kids got dressed in their costumes and we headed to Glow at the Gardens. I don’t know if it’s because Dempsey seemed less excited this year, or because they changed it up and there was no Headless Horseman, but it felt a little lackluster. That being said, Delaney and Chad joined us this year and Lydi was so happy to have her cousin there with her! And I’m never not glad for an occasion to hang with my family! They also had a little Halloween puppet show at the end that I found so funny 😂

Oh Saturday was a good one! The kids slept in and Joey went out on a run, so I started some spooky pancakes for all of us. The topping was definitely achieved by food coloring but the green pancakes are actually spinach-produced! We hung around the house for most of the day, finishing projects and chores and then the kids and I watched Halloweentown for the first time together and they seemed to love it!

At four, the kids were back in their costumes and we all headed to dinner on South Broadway. The parade came across my feed a month or so ago and I’ve been planning to go since! We had one of those nights where it all just worked out. We got a good parking spot near the restaurant, didn’t wait too long for a table, ate “huge ass slices” of pizza (Dempsey literally ordered it this way and we later had to have a talk about how even though everyone laughed at that story, it’s not really something we should repeat outside of Fat Sully’s 😅) before grabbing a front row spot at the parade. Plus it was perfect weather outside! It was a little sparse to begin with, but then Beetlejuice, Lydia Deetz, all three Sanderson Sisters and a group of costumed dancers came down the route and it was all fun from then on! My favorites were all the Ecto-1s and Ghostbusters, an axe-throwing company float with Jason aboard, a pogo-sticker doing backflips and inflatable costume-wearers dancing to “The Monster Mash.” The kids got some candy too. We got out of there and back home fairly easily and got the kiddos straight to bed. Dempsey told me this was his favorite part of the weekend and I think it was mine too!

Sunday Extra Funday! The kids slept in again and then we all ate breakfast and got ready for the pumpkin patch. We literally spent six hours there and we still didn’t do everything (though this is the closest we’ve gotten)! Headed out to the patch first and you can tell the kind of weather we had this year by how mushy a lot of the pumpkins were. We all still managed to find some cool ones. Afterward, the kids played at the jump pad until our bonfire was up and running and then we all roasted hot dogs and bratwurst for lunch. Post-lunch, we walked through the corn maze, visited the petting zoo and let the kids do pony rides before heading back to the bonfire for s’mores! They have a new play area with tons of climbing obstacles that the kids were loving. Everyone else started to take off about then but we stayed to fit in a ride on the barrel train and a few loops around the trike track for Dempsey. Feel especially proud of him for braving the pony and the train because you could tell he was nervous for both! Somehow, no one fell asleep on the way home, so when we got back, we watched Room on the Broom, then dinner, bath/shower and bed for the kids. Afterward, Joey and I watched the last episode of Widow’s Bay and… I don’t know, is the show that good? 🤔

Dempsey’s birthday is tomorrow! Casa Bonita, here we come!