We're Off To See the Wizard...

It's a little strange, I know, but ever since my kids were little itty bitties, I have wanted them to be characters from the Wizard of Oz for Halloween. Now that I felt like they were old enough to enjoy it, I was so excited to have this dream come to fruition, but the girls were so set on what they wanted to be. Paige wanted to be Raggedy Ann and Kamae was going to be a ballerina. I can't remember what Spencer wanted to be (mainly because that changed every other minute) and you know, Jack just didn't care. So, I figured this year, I'll let them be whatever and maybe next year I can impose my idea on them. Well, Paige really wanted Grandma Orton to make her Raggedy Ann costume for her, but seeing as how she is in China (they are teaching English there through a BYU program) for the next year, that wasn't going to happen. So, Paige, after weeks of thought, finally decided on her own that she wanted to be Dorothy. I couldn't believe it! Kamae's idea evolved into an angel fairy. And then, once I mentioned that she could be Glinda the Good Witch, she was all over that and once Spencer found out that the Tin Man had an axe he was all for it (don't tell, but we decided not to do an axe...he forgot all about it and we felt that it was better for him not to have to carry anything, let alone something that he would turn into a weapon...even if it was made of cardboard and foil!)! My fantasy was off and running. My mom already had the Dorothy dress in her plethora of dress ups for the girls (we found Toto and a basket at DI...not sure why they're not in the picture), my funny friend, Penny, had a tin man costume down to the silver shoes that she lent us, my amazing friend Robyn spruced up Kamae's dress to make it look just right and so pretty (we bought the dress and she added sleeves...notice how perfectly puffy they are, a shimmery overlay, some tulle slips to make the dress poofy and she made the crown...I'm telling ya', she's amazing...thanks again, Robyn!), and we found a lion costume at Kid to Kid for Jack (it was actually a baby bunting that Austin (notice that Austin has to do the sewing around here) created into pants...even though they were too short, for $4.50 it was just perfect!). It was great! So, now I can check that one off of the list! It made me so happy to see them all together like they could star in their own little play!

3 out of 4 looking...guess that's our average!

And to top it all off, my sister, Kristen's work had their crazy Halloween party again this year. And their "Executive Row" 's theme was (they are the ones that did Disneyland last year)....drum roll please.....the Wizard of Oz! How perfect was that? The kids were so excited to go and have their picture taken with the other one of "them"! Here are the pics:

We had to get one of the Scarecrow. He was the only one missing from our little group!

Look at how amazing that lion costume/make-up is! They always go over-the-top!

Check out that tin man! Where do you get stuff like that?

The founder of Omniture is the Wizard of Oz.
(Pardon me, but I can't remember his name!)

And, it wouldn't be a complete Ominutre Halloween Party without the little people! Of course, they were the munchkins! I just can't get over the fact that they fly them in every year from Vegas! And they are so nice and more than willing to take pictures with the kiddos!

I guess the kids didn't remember that the little people were there last year as Snow White's Seven Dwarfs. Kamae was so confused...she whispered to me, "Mom, how did those people get so small?" I think that she thought that they were regular people who got small just for their role as the munchkins. I briefly explained what I could to her and told her to just be quiet. Apparently, my explanation didn't satisfy her curiosity or confusion about it all. Look at her face:

My sister's department did Candyland, the board game. It turned out really cute and she was the gumdrop queen. They even had a big Gingerbread house that the kids could walk through!
And they also had a BYU Cougar section (I won't mention that we had to walk through Ute territory to get there) and, of course, we needed a picture with Cosmo! You can't tell from the picture, but they are standing on real grass that they brought in to make a football field! Mind you, that all of this (Wizard of Oz, Candyland, etc) is all done in their workspace. They have to build it all around their cubicles and offices! Crazy people! It's absolutely amazing, though, and so much fun! We were only able to be there for about an hour, so we didn't even see half of what was there, but what we were able to see we loved! Thanks for inviting us, Kristen!

Go Cougars! Rah....rah....rah, rah, rah!

We could only stay for an hour because we needed to rush home to our Halloween Party! Tanya, Andrea and I planned a "Pre-Trick or Treat, Meet, Greet and Eat" where people could just stop by our house to get some soup, rolls and hot chocolate. If they wanted to, they could enter the "Spooky Treat Contest". We had lots of cool entries and there was even a prize for the winner! We had all of the guests cast a vote for their favorite!


We had white chocolate covered chocolate cookie mummies, green cookie witch fingers, yummy peanut butter bars, witch's hats, fluffy pumpkin dip, jello hands, amazing pumpkin roll, peanut butter witch's fingers (they even had a hidden pretzel inside to resemble crunching on a bone!! They looked so real, I couldn't bring myself to eat one!)...and the winner was.....

Bloody Potato Chips!
Jeff and Marianne Orr

brought some Ketchup Chips (you can only get them in Canada) and, obviously, they were a hit!! They won a ceramic pumpkin bowl full of caramel corn! Hope you enjoy! We figured that by the end of the night we had over 115 people come through our house! We were so happy that we had a good turn out...it just may have to become an annual tradition!!