Happy Halloween

With Halloween on a Monday this year, it managed to stretch out into an entire weekend of activities. The result: WAY TOO MUCH CANDY!! But, it was lots of fun and the kids all looked cute in their costumes!
Friday night we had a dinner followed by a Trunk or Treat at church. It was so packed! Plus, since the weather was cold, rainy and windy, the candy gathering was reassigned from the parking lot to the hallways. It was craziness! Our church building is U-shaped instead of a complete circle, so as kids got to the end of the hall, they had no choice but to turn around and get smashed with the rest of crowd of candy gatherers (young and not so young!) I was glad that I was standing in one place handing out candy and Joe took the kids around!

Here's some picture of the kids in costume just as we were leaving for the church party...

Here's a shot of the boys in the "costume parade"

Saturday was of course taken up by soccer games and pumpkin carving (see previous page).

Monday was the actual holiday and was jam-packed with activities. I was in charge of the party in Sam's classroom so I was very busy leading up to that getting all of the last-minute details figured out. As always with his parties, I brought the camera but was too busy to remember to pull it out and take pictures! Right after that, we hurried home and go the other two in their costumes and headed to Joe's work. They invited the families to come and go trick-or-treating from office to office and then they had treats in the breakroom. It was fun and Joe got to show off the kids in their cute costumes.

After that, we headed straight to my brother's house. We had dinner with my family and then headed out in a group to hit our favorite neighborhood on the South Hill. The cousins love going together! Here's a shot of them together before we left. We're missing one cousin from the shot, but Ollie and his parents caught up with us later :-)

 I think this was the first door that we went to, Sam is probably being picky and making sure that he gets something that he likes!

We were off to a good start and then....the battery on the camera died! Oh well, it was a fun night. They lasted way longer than last year and got way too much candy. We were all exhausted by the time we called it quits and headed home. It was a great Halloween!

Pumpkin Time!

Today we carved our pumpkins for Halloween. The kids are always excited about this, except when it comes to actually getting their hands dirty! They can't stand cleaning "the slime" out of the pumpkins. So, it usually turns into a mommy/daddy job with the kids looking on and occasionally picking up a stray seed or two.

Andrew, our little artist, was very careful to draw out his design ahead of time so that we knew exactly what he had in mind.

Here's how it turned out... 

Sam, with his huge pumpkin. He always like to pick out the biggest one he can find!

 Abby, showing us the face that her pumpkin is making!

The finished product...

Sadly, this is the last we saw of Abby's little pumpkin. Sometime between lighting them before the kids went to bed and going out an hour or two later to put out the candles before we went to bed, her little pumpkin was kidnapped! The kids were pretty sad about it when they found out in the morning. We never found any "remains" in the street, we even drove around some looking for it, but no luck. So sad!

At the Farm

Andrew and Joe went on a fun preschool fieldtrip to Carver's Farm. Fieldtrips are always fun, but it was especially exciting that Daddy got to go on this one! Here's Andrew in the cornmaze and holding his "colorful" corn on the cob.

Here's the group as the got instructions at the pumpkin patch. Notice there are three little boys (Andrew is one of them) in yellow shirts with no coats? Well, those were the three that were in Joe's car :-) Apparently, he was a little distracted when loading them up at school and forgot one little detail...coats! It was a very cold day, too! The kids survived and all the mom's got a chuckle out of it, not all that surprised based on their husband's behavior. One of my friend's (who was not there but heard about it from the teacher at her child's fieldtrip the following day) commented that at least he didn't forget any of the kids!

On the hayride...notice he now has a sweatshirt! Joe went back to the van and found some sweatshirts that were stashed away, but the other two boys didn't want to wear them. In all fairness, one of them was for Abby and it was bright pink, so I can't really blame the kid! 

Here's Andrew selecting a pumpkin...not quite sure what that face was all about :-)

Just playing around with some friends! 

Andrew came home with several pumpkins and gourds and made sure to share them with his brother and sister. They were very excited that he brought things home for them and he was obviously pleased that they appreciated his gifts. It was very cute!

Her own sense of STYLE

Abby always wants to pick out her own clothes, she definately has her own ideas on what she wants to wear! She always prefers skirts/dresses and wants to wear these boots with EVERYTHING...even when it was still 90+ degrees outside!

You can't see it very well in this picture, but she was also wearing my chunky silver necklace and a flower in the back of her hair. She is such a girlie girl, I love it!