Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Today was Benjamin's first Halloween so his mommy had to plan something very special for his big day and what better way to celebrate than a Halloween party for him and 9 friends (plus 7 other moms). The soiree started at 10AM and lasted for about 2-1/2 hours, since by that time most of those little bodies were ready for a long nap after a morning of eating, crafts and photo taking.

Ben dressed up as a cuddly leopard and therefore I had to dress up as the mommy kitty to complete his whole look. Here's a photo of us together. The funniest part about my costume was that when Ben first saw it when I went to get him from his morning nap, he kept looking at me and smiling and was completely distracted as I was trying to nurse him. He couldn't seem to get enough of me with ears, whiskers and a pink nose!

I set up a "photo area" near the entrance to my house so that I could (attempt) to get every child's photo when he/she first got to the party. Some are with the moms and some are alone, but here are the photos of our guests today:

Jordan (4-1/2) and Jorianna (2-1/2) Spencer:

Aimee and Elaina (almost 2) Saunders:

Tyler (almost 2) and Samantha (2 months) Kriebel:

Julie and Talya (6 months) Delp:

Nicole and Xander (6 months) Hoishik:

Sarah and Will (1 year) Stewart:

Nicholas Roque (2 weeks!!):

I made some fun themed foods and just about everything was shaped like a pumpkin and tinted orange on the food table! Here are two photos of my two favorite creations, candy corn shaped cookies and Jack-o-lantern yogurt smoothies:

We did two crafts, Cheerio spiders and "decorate your own pumpkin-shaped Rice Krispie treat", and Barney certainly is still having a blast roaming the area where these crafts took place, looking for runaway candy corns and Cheerios!

Here are some of the kids at work on their crafts (and for the babies, the moms had fun doing their craft!) . You should have seen some of the creations that were made - pink and purple spiders and pumpkins with 10 eyes - lol!

I had the best time preparing everyone's favors so I wanted to take a photo of them to share. I gave the babies two organic teething biscuits, the toddlers Play Doh and the moms a Halloween scrapbook page that I put together for each person. Our scrapbook group is meeting on Friday night so it will be fun to scrap our photos together!

The kids all seemed to have a fun time playing together this morning and I particularly love to see Ben interact with the other babies that are close to his age. It's so much fun to watch them explore one another (by pulling each other's hair and swatting each other in the face!). All of the little babies looked so cuddly today in their cute costumes.

Ben and Talya are always so cute together, especially now that they can both sit steadily and therefore are able to interact more.

Ben and Xander have seen each other more often lately and really seem to have a fun time together. How cute and cuddly do they both look in their little animal costumes?!?! (and I swear that Ben's costume is long enough on him as it's a 6-12 month...it's just loose at the legs and kept riding up so it looks like he's wearing knickers in every photo!)

Will joins in the fun. It's hard to see in a photo, but Will had THE best costume and his mom made it! It's a spider where the legs are made out of stuffed socks and when Will crawls, it looks like this enormous spider moving around. The best part, though, was that mom Sarah had a "web" on her white skirt so he looked like he was sitting in his web when she held him in his sling. Adorable and so creative!

Here are a couple photos of the smallest critters today - Nicholas "Rooster" Roque before donning his feathers, just dressed in his regular Halloween attire and Miss Samantha the elephant. The ears on her costume were each at least twice the size of her head - so cute!!

Talya poses in her butterfly wings for the camera. My, it's tough to be a girl these days between Samantha's enormous elephant ears and Talya's oversized butterfly wings. Ben wouldn't have put up with either for very long but these gals were troopers!

Finally, Miss Elaina the Indian Princess is helping me keep Ben well-fed by giving him "O's" out of the bowl of Cheerios that we used for the spider craft. "Here Ben, try one...or twenty!"