Hallows Eve

This Halloween, Natalie chose to join her cousins Vanessa and Victoria as fairy butterflies. She picked the color purple for her costume and wore it to school on Friday.

Here is she happy in her fairy butterfly costume. It's funny how kids love to dress up!

Here is Natalie's costume from the back. The fairy wings were well-made and withstood a whole day of play.

Natalie's costume from the side. She's so well-behaved and a perfect model for photo-taking. Of course, after the photos are taken, she screams, "I wanna see! I wanna see!"

On Sunday, we had a full-day out with The Zoo (6 cousins together). We had dim sum at CityPlaza and while the adults kept eating, the kids ran around outside and played games together. Natalie and Vanessa wore their fairy costume.
After dim sum and a bit of shopping, The Zoo went to Lisa's house where the kids all helped to bake cupcakes.
Here Natalie and Vanessa line the cupcake tins with cupcake papers.
Halfway through the cupcake making, Buzz lightyear (a.k.a Ethan) and his little brother arrived to join in the fun.
Here we have divided the butter-cream icing into little bowls and each of the kids had a chance to mix their own icing colors. Natalie chose purple and we mixed red and blue food coloring for her.
After the icing colors were made (we had 2 reds, 2 blues, and 1 purple), the kids got down to work decorating with icing and sprinkles.
Everyone had a lot of fun decorating, although Nicholas did more eating than decorating. It was also messy with icing and sprinkles everywhere, but the kids had a great time and the adults ate more cupcakes than they did :)
The final products. Great job everyone!
Afterwards, while the adults cleaned up, the kids enjoyed one or two cupcakes during an episode of Dora the Explorer.
Later, we all trooped downstairs to enjoy the great weather at the nearby park. Nicholas (who over-heated earlier in his duck costume) was able to put it on again for a brief time.
It's really tough getting the kids to stand still and look at the camera for a group photo. Next time, we should dress them all in costumes with masks. Buzz was great and kept his eyes open and smiled for the camera the whole time.

A purple fairy butterfly going down the slide.
And a purple fairy butterfly walking around the park. It was a full day and Natalie didn't nap all day, but stayed in a good mood.
The kids playing together on the equipment.
Back at Lisa's apartment, Clark got down to business carving a Halloween pumpkin.
When he opened it, he let the kids check out the Halloween "intestines", but they didn't dare put their hands inside and help pull out the "guts".
The guts. Pumpkin guts are delicious when fried with a bit of oil and lots of salt. Did I mention you need lots of salt?
Once emptied, Clark begins cutting out the jack-o-lantern face.
The finished product! A spooky, candy-eating jack-o-lantern.
We told a scary story to the kids about a pumpkin who becomes a jack-o-latern on Hallowe'en because it likes to eat kids... kid's candy, that is! They had to protect their candy from the evil candy-eating pumpkin! Muah-ha-ha!
And finally, after the full day, the kiddies had a quick bath before heading home to sleep.