Our Halloween was such a good one this year and a little more low key than years past, but in a very good way. Halloween weekend fun kicked off on Friday with the Parade of Fiction at the boys’ schoool. Parade of Fiction is essentially a book character parade where the kids all dress up as characters from various books and parade around the school with their character’s book in their hand. It’s one of my favorite events their school does every year! We love seeing what book characters are most popular each year and the creativity in some of the costumes never ceases to amaze me. We saw some pretty incredible Wild Robots, an adorable Dragon + Taco pairing, Super Rabbit Boy from the boys’ favorite Press Start! series, a Lorax that looked like the real deal and more.
This year Chase went as Leo from The Academy soccer book series he fell in love with over the summer.
Ryder went as Jack from Jack and the Beansalk/Land of Stories.
Rhett was Mercy Watson from his favorite beginner chapter book series and made sure to include Mercy’s favorite snack, “toast with a great deal of butter on it,” around his neck.
Friday also happened to be our 16-year wedding anniversary! Ryan and I laughed on the morning of our anniversary because we said that when we selected our wedding day back in our 20s, we had no thought to our future selves with kids and the chaos that would come with a wedding anniversary popping up the day before Halloween. (At the time booking a wedding on October 30 was just a great way to get a discount on our wedding venue!) Now our wedding anniversary is consumed with costumes and candy but agreed that one day we know we’ll wish our anniversary was taken over by all of the mayhem that comes along with celebrating Halloween with little ones so we fully embrace it. We also fully embraced the red velvet cake I made for us to enjoy (the same flavor as our wedding cake) and Rhett insisted we put candles on it to blow out.
The boys wanted to sing “Happy Anniversay” (to the tune of Happy Birthday) and we agreed Mom and Dad’s anniversary is a special day for all of us because it’s kind of like the day our family began!
Halloween 2026
Our Halloween was pretty relaxed up until the main event and consisted mostly of home time with a break in the mix for Ryder’s final soccer game of the fall season. He grew a lot as a player and we were so proud of him for playing a lot of different positions (goalie = misery, defence = okay, striker = his happy place) and always trying hard on the field. I think he wore his soccer medal for 4 hours after his final game!
We also spent some time with our three foster kittens, Hal O. Ween (“Hal”), Cotton Candy (“Candy”) and Laffy Taffy (“Taffy”), three “house panthers” as one of you described them when you saw our three black kittens on Instagram. (Loved that!)
They’ve been so much fun and the boys were thrilled when the shelter said they could be in charge of naming this sweet little trio. I could write a million words about our foster cat journey but after nearly a dozen kittens coming through our home, it’s been a truly incredible experience and one that has taught me so much about the behind-the-scenes effort of shelters that do so much to help animals that desperately need a safe place to land.
In the late afternoon, our friends Carrie, Nick and their three kids came over and we ate pizza and painted pumpkins (acryllic paint markers = the best for this!) before heading out for trick-or-treating.
The boys made a game-time decision when it came to their Halloween costumes, selecting their costumes from our costume bin, and went as Captain Hook (Ryder), Jack Sparrow (Chase) and Zorro (Rhett)!
Our group of 10 had the best time hitting up a million houses and overloading bags with candy. We realized we’ve celebrated a decade of Halloweens together!
And you know a solid part of Halloween is the big candy dump + sort at the end of the night! Eventually we said goodbye to our friends, with the exception of Tommy, their middle son who spent the night!
Sunday
Sunday began with post-sleepover smoothies and cinnamon rolls! The boys wasted no time indoors and spent the first couple hour of the day fishing with their friend before making up some kind of game upstairs that involved a ball and a lot of screaming, laughing and thumping noises. Standard.
In the late morning, we took Tommy home on our way to Chase’s final soccer game of his fall season. It’s been an interesting season with some highs and lows for Chase but he’s such a strong player and puts forth so much effort. His speed never ceases to amaze me and he ended the season with a goal and a win for his team!
By the time we arrived home, I had three minutes to get back out the door with Hal, one of our foster kittens, as I heard from the shelter that he had a potential adopter interested in meeting him. I was hopeful for Hal because he’s the total package of a cat — curious, playful, social and cuddly. The meet-and-greet took just over an hour and Hal ended up going home with a woman I think will make him the king of her house!
I arrived back home after a quick grocery store run to find Ryan and the boys playing pickleball in the driveway. (I still highly recommend this net if you need a holiday gift idea!) I got to work on dinner as the boys made their way inside for showers before family movie night. I think the last time we watched Kung Fu Panda Chase was a toddler so we gave it a whirl again last night with bowls of ice cream in our laps. The movie was a mega-hit and got a lot of laughs out of our boys. It also inspired a lot of kung fu moves before bed and might not have been the best choice for a “relaxing” movie before bedtime. Ha!
As for the week ahead, it’s a little different than usual as the boys are all out of school on Monday and Tuesday for parent/teacher conferences. Chase is also off to a friend’s house for a birthday party later today, the little guys have martial arts and I need to pick up medication for our remaining two foster kittens so we’ll be running around a bit as I try to squeeze in little pockets of work time. I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween weekend and enjoy the week ahead! Thanks for stopping by the blog today!
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