Having a one day old baby last year on Halloween eclipsed my years-long blog tradition of making a Halloween-themed blog post. I was taking a walk down memory lane reading older Halloween blog posts today and gathered them together into a new mini-post. A constant in the pictures for each is my Halloween troll pin. It was a part of my massive troll collection as a kid and I wear it every year! (I have two of them, so that’s why the hair color is sometimes different from year to year!)

In 2010, I was Scully: Happy Halloween! | Talk Birth

In 2011, their skeleton sweatshirts were new (Tanner now wears Alaina’s and Alaina wears Lann’s original from 2006): Happy Halloween! | Talk Birth

In 2012, I was Luke Skywalker wearing Yoda on my back: Happy Halloween! | Talk Birth

2013 was significantly more adventurous and involved wearing a gypsypriestess costume to Sirloin Stockade while wrangling five kids through the buffet by myself. It also involved some fabulous kid-quotes:

“Let’s go to another park and continue this torturefest.” (as we were leaving the wet, cold, stormy park after homeschool playgroup)

And… “I guess this is the ‘trick’ part of the day.” (as we staggered to our various destinations)

Source: Happy Halloween! | Talk Birth

This year I dressed up as a sort of elf-priestess for my parents’ Halloween party:

And, as already shared in other posts this week, the boys went as Freddy and Bonnie from the computer game Five Nights at Freddy’s.

Tanner was an epic tiny Draco Malfoy:

Alaina went as a “nursing mama witch” to my parents’ party and as Bellatrix Lestrange to the playgroup Halloween party and to Trunk or Treat:

We love going to Trunk or Treat at the University, because the students always recognize and appreciate our kids’ costumes and hardly anyone there has to ask who they are–they recognize them without needing explanations! It makes the kids happy and this year it made me super thrilled because I was so tickled by my tiny Malfoy that I loved having him appreciated by all the college students!

The boys carved really good pumpkins this year and Alaina had the mummy pumpkin:

Childbirth educators will enjoy knowing that Halloween clearance can be used for CBE teaching aids in this post from Science and Sensibility: Brilliant Activities for Birth Educators: Trick or Treat – Halloween Spoils Make Great Teaching Aids
Two other tangentially related Halloween posts that I usually share around this time of year are:

What Really Scares Me: Social Attitudes Towards Women | Talk Birth

Fears About Birth and Losing Control | Talk Birth