kickin' it elmer style

 The Cake-Grammy brought this really cute idea of making a haunted house out of rice crispy treats with the kids, so we decided that went well with the spooky theme so it became Bennett's birthday cake.  Awesome!  Check out that detail work.  The windows were rolled out of colored tootsie rolls and individually cut, the gravestones were painstakingly scavenged from the kids trick or treat bags or formed from tootsie rolls, the skulls were from a pack of gummy treats, the trees were shaped from a piece of black licorice, the bones/skeletons/and bat were made from white chocolate and the jack-o-lantern is a reeses pumpkin.  The project turned out to be a bit much for the little ones to handle.  They did the whole roof and then Grammy and I took over and enjoyed pretending we were on Ultimate Cake Challenge as we worked together to form what we thought to be an amazing cake!

 Ender made good use of his time unattended and found a licorice to annihilate!  He is such a sweetie.  He now has three teeth with another sure to pop through any second.  He is a great crawler and is now pulling himself up on all kinds of things.  I think he is going to catch up to the other boys in no time! 

 The day of the Party-We loved doing a spooky theme for Bennett because we got Halloween decorations 75% off and it's totally fun.  Peggy had a cute idea to make these little goodie bags for the kids out of Halloween paper.  They can bee seen on the left hand side of this picture.  Also she decorated sugar cookies with the kids and we displayed those next to the cake also. 

 Maya led the kids in a spider making craft (which Bennett decided to read his spooky story book instead).

 This ghoul cheese ball was another great Grammy idea.  Isn't he adorable?

 Porter was going to teach the kids how to make ghosts out of suckers and tissue paper, but we ran out of time... maybe next year.

 Casey played "Don't Eat Pete" with the kids.  In case you haven't played don't eat Pete I'm going to include the rules.  Its so fun.  You put a candy on each square and on person closes their eyes while everyone picks one candy to be Pete.  The person who closed their eyes then begins eating the candy's one by one and when they reach for Pete everyone yells "DON'T EAT PETE".  It's a great game!

 The blowing out of the candles (I think it took him 4 blows, one for each candle).  Doesn't the house look spooky?

 And lastly he was showered with gifts.  He has become inseparable from several of his gifts.  What an adorable little 4 year old!

 The last gift was a "surprise ball" Grammy made him.  She rolled up a bunch of streamers into a ball and dispersed throughout the ball were tiny little gifts.  Such a fun idea.  Her mom use to do this for her.  Maybe a new tradition!