Everything would have worked out if it weren't for those meddling kids

The next time I plan to host my daughter's birthday party the day before Halloween, someone just shoot me and put me out of my candy coated misery.

Or how about this- the next time I plan to host my daughter's birthday party the day before Halloween, and I stay up until 3 AM making all the decorations and food for the party the night before that, someone just shoot me and put me out of my hot-glue-and-powdered-sugar coated misery.

Why yes, I'm exhausted today. Why do you ask?

Needless to say, I bit off a little bit more than I could chew in the Fun Department over the weekend.

When I got home from work on Friday, we dressed the littles in their costumes and headed over to a fall festival held at a local church, where we saw some of the most adorable costumes I have ever laid eyes on. And that's saying something, because my babies have been all kinds of adorable over the years in their Halloween finest.

A few of my favorites at the festival were a Snoopy and Woodstock pair and another teeny girl dressed like Raggedy Ann. I wish I had photographic evidence, but taking pictures of children with whom you have no verifiable relationship is generally frowned upon. So you'll have to take my word for it.

When we got home Friday evening, I started preparing all the food and decorations for Missy's birthday party on Saturday. Since the party was the day before Halloween, and because I love finding excuses for my children to wear their costumes more than once per season (it makes me feel like I get my money's worth), we were throwing a Halloween-themed birthday party for her.

And since I'm Mrs. Procrastinator Extraordinaire, the only items crossed off my To-Do checklist prior to Friday was "Research Ideas" and "Gather Supplies."

In other words, I knew I was in for a loooooong night.

For the next 6 hours (9:00 PM -3:00 AM) I made vampire bats, mummies, ghosts, witches' shoes, spiders, spider hatchlings. I had tons of help from J, who never complained, even when I sent him to The Store because I was in a panic for fishing wire. He drew faces and folded paper and taped bats together. I couldn't have done everything without his involunteerism.

(By the way, I warn you never to begin a craft that calls for fishing wire AKA invisible string. It's IMPOSSIBLE to tie invisible string. IMPOSSIBLE, I SAY.)

I turned string cheese into monster fingers, which meant literally CARVING out the knuckle joints. I also cut out approximately 6,274 bat/cat/pumpkin shapes out of flour tortillas for chips. We only own 1 cookie sheet, but everything was such a blur by the time I got around to baking these, that I can't even begin to hazard a guess how long it took me to finish them.

What I can tell you is how many times I was afraid the smoke detectors were going to go off in the middle of the night: Two.

Come to find out, I don't think we have smoke detectors.

After a short 4 hour nap, I got up "early" and make the hot dog mummies, the bones (that ended up looking like dog treats, so not very Halloween-y), and the icing for the cake.

Jason is the resident cake decorator and I think he hit another homerun with this one:

Because this post is already too long and uninteresting, I'll spare you all the party details except to say it was a success! After lunch and a real nap, I spent the rest of my day in my pjs watching sports on TV.

It's like I don't even know myself anymore.

But the Rangers were (are) playing in the World Series while my beloved Baylor bears were playing the University of Texas in a nationally televised game.

The BU/UT match-up originally garnered national TV time because of how great UT was supposed to be, but as the season evolved, people were starting to take notice of Baylor! I'm thrilled to report that the bears laid some smack down, holding UT to only 1 touchdown (and a whole bunch of field goals). Baylor even came from behind to win the game.

And I thought I would cry happy tears. ECSTATIC tears!

Sunday was a great day of worship, rest, and a fun night of trick-or-treating. We hit up a few houses as a family, but as more trick-or-treaters flooded the sidewalks, J stayed home to pass out candy while I supervised the kids door-to-door.

When we exhausted our candy-laden resources, we headed home and grilled hot dogs outside while we welcomed more treaters. Cade declared it the best Halloween ever. It makes me SO happy knowing we're creating happy family memories together.

Even if we are just meddling kids.