All of those Halloweens that Kim made special, came roaring back as Cody brought the decorations down from the ceiling in the garage...Her Mrs. Pots (from Beauty and the Beast) costumer...and all of those that she had made for the bambini over the years...the ghosts she collected, adding a new one each Halloween.
With those costumes and decoration, I realized, also came expectations. From the bambini. Unspoken, to be sure, yet, none the less, there. Halloween had been one of my favorite holidays - I knew I could put something decent together. For the kids.
Autumn, Tonio, Lexy and Breanna set up all of the inside decorations for me...and Tonio helped me set up all of the pumpkins outside. We have a lot of pumpkins. In fact, we got a great review from the Bunckins, Ami and Brian Bunch's triplets, who came over for pasta one night along with their cousin Brinley and Mary and Emilio...
Mary, Emilio, Ami and Tonio...after much pasta! Another of my favorite Adidas shirts...
Colton, Hunter, Ethan, Brinley and Autumn...having played trains, kitchen, doll house, entertained Bella, etc, etc, retire to the couch.
On their way out, Ami told me that the triplets hollered 'Bye scary pumpkins!' and "Bye lotta pumpkins!"
Doing my best to muster my 'inner-Kim', we had our annual pumpkin carving night.
Kim always had the bambini sketch out their ideas first...
Autumn borrows one of Mama's tricks - using a melon baller to make the mouth and eyes.
Cody has Kim's instinctive ability to find the face in the pumpkin and bring it out.
My favorite part - scooping out the pumpkin guts!
Autumn decides to try the raw pumpkin...an likes it!
And, her 'sister', Bella does too! (as I was posting this, Autumn says 'Are you putting the photo of me eating the pumpkin guts on the blog?' Yes, I tell her, and the one of her 'sister'. "We look so much alike" she giggled."
It's hard to see, but Cody made his pumpkin look like Jack Skellington.
Autumn prepares the seeds. A long standing tradition that Kim started, is to brush the seeds with olive oil, sprinkle with coarse kosher salt and bake them! When they were done, we watched Ocean's 11 - not exactly a Halloween movie, but a cool one, none the less, as I continue to show the movies Kim and I loved to the bambini. And, ironically, the main character, Danny Ocean (played by George Clooney), outwits the bad guys, despite impossible odds, ends up with a lot of money, and, of course, rides off into the sunset with the girl...dammit.
Here's Aut's with the melon ball effect. When you light a candle inside of the pumpkin, the areas carved by melon baller glow. Pretty cool.
Bambini pumpkins.
The night of Halloween, Cody got an early jump on transforming the front of our house into the entrance to hell. He used a ladder, black Hefty bags, white Hefty bags, strobe lights and...this year's new investment...a fog machine!
Tonio is Batman, Aut the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp version, of course) and Cody did dress as a ghoul, once his buddy Alex came over to help him hand out candy and collect the souls of hapless trick or treaters! He had a lot of fun this Halloween - being able to use duct tape and any household item he desired, helped Cody have a memorable Halloween. He enjoyed trying to scare everyone and building a spooky environment.
And the little ones made their rounds throughout Rita Ranch, which they enjoyed, beginning at our neighbor's Rachel and Dave (who give them rides to school in the morning), where we had some dinner before heading out with Lupe, Manny and Monsi.
Rachel and Dave's little girl, Parker, was Pebbles, Rachel dressed as Wilma and Dave had an awesome Fred Flinstone costume that Rachel made him.
Monsi is dressed as Marceline, from the cartoon "Adventure Time" one of the kid's favorites! They had fun going door to door. Tonio even went through a haunted house by himself!
Afterwards, Monsi, Tonio and Autumn inspect their loot. It was cute watching them separate the 'good' candy from the 'bad' candy and then do some trading! Monsi helped make the little ones Trick or Treat a great one!
And some random Halloween photos:
Brinley makes the sweetest bee!
Ethan, Hunter and Colton - ready to save the world!
Kim (Snooki), Andrea (Scarecrow) and Janene (Victoria's Secret Model)
I know that the kids had a Happy Halloween this year - and that was my goal...we all combined to make it a good one.
As I searched for Kimmy Halloween photos - I was able to come across some photos of happy times - before it always seemed like October.
This was on 7th street in L.A. We stayed downtown for a business conference I went to. In this shot, we were waiting to watch the Red Hot Chili Peppers filming a video for MTV from there latest CD 'By the Way'...a great CD.
Autumn and her Mama. Kim, always a Disney fan - I had gotten her the Dumbo cookie jar that you see behind her.
And, with Baloo bear at Disneyland!
Love that face!
Antonio. I loved Kim's hair in this one.
Cody sporting the Donald Duck hat in Toon Town at Disneyland.
I will post more later...I've found soooo many. We always wondered what we'd do with all those boxes, cartons and albums of photos...I'm glad we took so many now, but, there still are not enough of Kim!
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