Trick-or-treating / Christmas shopping!

So last night I went trick-or-treating with my sons, and Jeremy stayed at home with the baby. We had tons of fun. I made up a map of our neighbor hood so we could mark off the houses once we rang the bell, The plan was to try to get them all. I set out with the boys. Darien and Zachary were Power Rangers, and Nathaniel was Batman, I was Winnie the Pooh.

It was fun, we didn't get to all of the houses, because it was windy out, and that made it colder, but we did end up with a lot of candy. Plenty, and it should last us a long time. I had so much fun. One of our neighbors had made their garage into a haunted house. If you walked through, you got more candy. Darien was the only one brave enough to do it. He said it was dark and there were skeletons, and scary costumes, but he wanted the candy, and he didn't care. He came out laughing and said "That was fun mom!" Nathaniel just hung on to my leg, he wasn't going anywhere near that house. I saw some really great costumes. One kids was dress up like a robot, it was great. He even had a flash light in has head piece. I also saw a really good Vampire one. It didn't look cheaply made, and she looked great in it. Lots of people were just hanging out in their font yard, playing music, dancing, and handing out candy. It was great, like a big neighbor hood hang out. After covering about half the neighbor hood, we headed home. We ate some candy, then went to bed. The kids now have plenty of candy. I divided it up and put it into buckets with their names on them, so they can eat it at their on pace (when allowed). I told the boys that they can eat some after meals, as long as they ate all of their food, and after school work. Sugar rush anyone?


I also have good news (well good for me), I'm all finished Christmas shopping! YAY! I finished it on Friday, and I am so happy, and I can't wait to wrap all of the gifts. I order it all online. Right now Amazon and Toys R Us are offering free shipping so it just made sense to order all of them. This way I don't have to worry about trying to buy things without my kids seeing. Since I homeschool, they don't go to school, so I can't buy things when they are at school, and they always go with me everywhere. I also got to compare prices with both Amazon and Toys R Us (they don't always have the same), and buy things from the best place. I started by making a wish list on Toys R Us, then I took that list and looked up all of those items on Amazon, and I wrote down who had the best price. This saved me $40 dollars. If I order everything off of Toys R Us, then the total would have been $360, and if I order everything off of Amazon the the total would have been $370, but since I went back and forth the total was $320 (yeah). Amazon has really good prices on Lego, and Toys R Us has great prices on Board games.

This year my husband and I thought of a great Idea. We are not putting labels on the boys gifts, because they share everything anyways. This way they will all get more presents, and it took the pressure off of us, because we didn't have to worry about how much money we spent on each of them. We just got things they all would like. So much easier!