Friday, October 30, 2015

Pumpkin Carvers Extraordinaire!

With Jon working certain evenings, plus having mutual on Tuesday nights, we had to be pretty organized this year about our pumpkin carving tradition. Wednesday night we quickly got homework done, wolfed down dinner, and got set up to carve our pumpkin patch pumpkins. The kids were soooo excited (and so was Jon)!
Jon was determined to carve his own pumpkin this year, so I got the icky job of scraping out and carving Leah and Zach's pumpkins, as well as helping Lucy do hers. She does most of it-- but still needs a little help with the details. Each of my kids had very specific designs in mind, but for some dumb reason we could not find any of the little carving knives you get with the kits!! I must have thrown them out when we moved. We were seriously stuck using these huge kitchen knives and it was next to impossible!! ((Notice Leah's panties!! She is officially potty-trained. HOORAY!!))
Therefore, while I barely squeaked out Zach's Pikachu (end right), Leah did not get "Anna" which is what she had chosen, instead she had to settle for a happy jack o'lantern (middle right). I think she was okay with it. As soon as we lit them all up she was mesmerized and loved her pumpkin anyways! 
Lucy's pumpkin is the top left, an homage to Harry Potter of course. I love that she designed it and was determined to do it herself, despite having to do it with a butcher knife, ha! I'm just glad no one got cut. Jon's is the top right, the Storm Trooper, an homage to the new Star Wars movie coming out in December! 
We quickly made some hot chocolate, I whipped up some Halloween caramel corn, and we had a party right in the living room watching the Disney version of Ichabod Crane-- which is our other favorite tradition. My kids love to be deliciously scared (as Anne of Green Gables would say), and that's the perfect Halloween movie to do just that! 

Spooktober!

It's Halloween-time all around these parts and with three very enthusiastic little kids at home, we've been soaking up every last bit!
 But first, it's not a costume-- it's Zachary's new GLASSES!! Wohoo!! He looks so incredibly handsome in his new specs, and with his hipster haircut he went back to school after fall break practically a new man. Better than that? He can SEE! On the drive home from the eyeglass store, he kept pointing to things and saying, "Hey, can you guys see that?!?" Obviously, he's needed them for awhile so I'm glad we got them towards the beginning of the school year.
And no, this is also not a costume, it's the newest baby monster!! 26 weeks 1 day, and expanding by the hour... 
Last Saturday we decided to check out the pumpkin patch by our house, and since it was perfect fall weather, we timed it just right! We started off with a hayride which the kids loved. It took you right past the haunted corn maze, which you could just barely see into, and my kids were sure they wanted to come back that night when it opened and they wouldn't be scared. Yeah right! Maybe when they're 18...  
There was also a petting zoo with some super cute bunnies and a horse. 

My happy little sunflowers basking in some Colorado sunshine! There's officially snow in the forecast next week, so we'll take as much sunshine as we can get before winter officially hits.
Lucy playing in the corn bin.  
Jon took turns burying the kids in the corn kernels. Can you find Zach?? Maybe this is as close as we'll get to being buried in sand at the beach for awhile...
Cute little guys posing just outside the corn maze after we'd finally found our way out. It had rained for 3 days straight before the weekend, and the ground was wet and soggy. It was definitely the muddiest corn maze we'd been to, but we got some free balloon swords for our trouble!
Zach-O picking his perfect pumpkin. Naturally he wanted the biggest, roundest one in the whole "patch." 
My Wee-Wees found her perfect pumpkin! She saw this picture afterwards and said, "That was so much fun!" She loved it.
Can you guess which one of us DOESN'T actually have a pumpkin under their shirt? I'd give you a hint-- but I bet you don't need it! Zach was totally cracking up when we took this picture.
That night we party crashed Jeremy and Kylene's ward Trunk or Treat, because our ward (sadly) didn't have a Halloween party this year. The kids were SUPER excited to get dressed up and soooo ready to get some candy!
Beautiful Lucy decided to be Hermione again, complete with authentic robe and wand and pigmy puff. (With the addition of a lightning bolt to her forehead in Harry's honor).
Zach in his awesome Iron Man costume! And now with his glasses he even looks a little like Tony Stark (at least that's what we tell him to get him to wear them).
Here's Leah in her Ariel costume with lots of "makeups" on her face. She is going to be Rapunzel, but we didn't have the costume yet, so it was pretty easy to convince her to be a different princess since luckily we have plenty of dress-ups. She LOVED her red lips!
First there were carnival games to play, like this cake walk that Lucy won first try! There was a "Spook Alley" in a couple of the big classrooms next to each other that the deacons were put in charge of, and Leah and Zach were totally excited to go. Leah kept saying, "I be brave! I be brave!" when I told her it was really scary. We got in the very first room and it was pitch black with this little deacon dressed like a tarantula crawling around the floor. Leah took one look at him, looked right up at me, and said sadly, "I guess I not brave." She turned right back around and bolted out the entrance door, with Zach not too far behind. It was pretty hilarious.
Then there was a parade for all the kids to walk in. See cousin Sophie in her Rainbow Dash costume? Too cute!
Then it was finally time to head outside and trunk or treat, where they got TONS of candy. As soon as we got home they dumped it all out on the living room floor to check out their loot. Quite a haul! 
Sunday night we were invited over to Jeremy and Kylene's house for a much anticipated Harry Potter party. We all made different treats and Kylene made this fantastic chocolate display, complete with fizzing whizbees and chocolate frogs. Zach was in total HEAVEN!  
Some delicious, frothy butter beer. Lucy has now requested it for her birthday. Yum! 
Pumpkin pasties (my favorite). 
Cauldron cakes
And the whole crew ready to dig into some pretty fun HP treats. We played a fun trivia "Scene It" game that Lucy rocked! I still can't believe she's only read each of the books once, most of them in first grade, but she can still remember the tiniest details from all 7 books. She is amazing! It was a pretty fun way to spend a spooky weekend in October, just before Halloween!