Halloween

Halloween felt very simple this year. Well, I guess Halloween felt simple, but the week before Halloween felt a little bit more chaotic. By the time I got home from Mallorca I only had 3 days to pull together everyone's costumes. Luckily they had a pretty good idea of what they wanted to be and I was able to make it work. Cambrie wanted to be a formal apology (I love her creativity). We went to Goodwill and bought her a pants suit. She paired it with a top hat and walking cane, then finished it off with a name tag that read "Sorry." McKenzie wanted to be a girl from Beauxbaton's magical academy. That was a costume I needed to sew from scratch.  I was so rushed trying to get it done that she wasn't even done by the ward trunk or treat. She was pinned into part of it.  But I was able to finish it for actual Halloween. The boys originally wanted to be six-armed aliens, but I knew there was no way I could pull that off in such a short time. So I convinced them to be glow stick figures instead, and they thought those were stupendous. Watching them dance around in their glowing suits made me giggle.

The ward trunk or treat looked a little bit different this year. Instead of having a big ward chili cook off, each family brought their own food and we had a picnic in the gym. The kids had a little costume parade, a little monster mash dance, and then we did the trunk or treat. The teenagers were a little bit bored, and Cambrie was anxious to get home. She ended up bailing and going to the football game instead which I thought was totally appropriate. The younger kids had a blast though.  

We didn't get around to carving our pumpkins until Sunday morning. Unfortunately most of the pumpkins we picked up at the pumpkin patch just the week before had already gone squishy. So we weren't able to carve those ones. Luckily I stopped at King Soopers the night before to pick up a couple spares just in case this exact thing happened, so everyone ultimately had something to carve. Jeremy and Cambrie ended up creating shrunken heads out of apples. We had quite the collection of pumpkins this year. 

Halloween was on a Sunday this year, and I wasn't exactly sure how that was going to go. Growing up in Utah the whole state basically agreed to have Halloween on Saturday night if the 31st was ever on Sunday. Unfortunately Colorado doesn't feel the same way. So if the kids wanted to go trick or treating, and if we wanted to be a stop for trick-or-treaters, we also had to participate on Sunday night. Honestly I can think of worse things than going trick or treating on a Sunday night. We started out though with dinner at the Warner's. It's always fun to get together with them and to visit with our friends. We began trick or treating in their neighborhood, and ended up leaving McKenzie and Daxton to roam with the Werners. Cambrie wanted to stay home and be the candy distributor this year, and I think she had fun with that. Kelton returned to our neighborhood because I received a request from one of the parents asking if they could join us for trick or treating this year. I guess their daughter is new to the neighborhood and Kelton was so kind to at school that they wanted to go out with him.  Kelton has a goal to be friends with absolutely everybody in his class, and it melts my little heart thinking about it. Trick or treating was cold this year, but not outrageous. There was no snow or rain or wind, which helped. But one loop around the peanut was all I needed before coming inside and warming up. The kids ended up with so much candy this year. A lot of people were giving king size candy bars, and I think I might have to find ways to trade them for those delicious things!

Anderson Farms kindergarten field trip

I was lucky enough to be one of the volunteers that went on Daxton's field trip to Anderson Farms.  It was the perfect day to hang out at the pumpkin patch, and I had a great little group to supervise.  We took a short wagon ride out to the field where the kids picked their pumpkins.  

Some were more choosy than others, but I was still impressed how quickly they all found the perfect pumpkin to take home.  

We rode with our pumpkins back to the farm where we were able to play the rest of our visit.  The kids climbed on the playground equipment, wandered through a maze, scampered up a tower of tires, and bounced like crazy on the balloon bed.  They had huge smiles the whole day.  

(I'm super impressed this picture worked because all of the kids had to jump on 3!)

Mrs. Olson's class

My buddy and me.

Pack it in with Nana and Papa

Bruce and Leesa came out to watch the kids in their primary program.  Luckily for them they got more than they bargained for!  It was soccer Saturday with three of our kids playing, beautiful leaves for family pictures, the pumpkin patch, Halloween festivities, and the primary program.  Here is photographic proof that we were busy all day having fun.

Eating crickets!  No thank you.

Soccer!  Soccer!  Soccer!  By some crazy miracle we were able to watch all three games without much overlap.

Shenanigan's at home.

Crafting our Halloween crafts.

Making our Halloween treats.

Sunday morning looking good!

Rock Creek Farms

It took us longer than we would have liked to go to the pumpkin patch this year, but we finally made it!  It was rough finding our perfect pumpkins because so many of the good ones had already found homes.  We found a lot of green ones, skull shaped ones, long ones, and squishy ones.  

"It's big and it's mine, but it's stuck on the vine!"

We wandered the fields for a long time before finally choosing some to bring home.  

Family picture at the pumpkin patch.

While we like wandering the fields, what our little family looks forward to the most is the hay bail maze at the play area.  We don't walk through the hay bales, we run on top of them!  It makes for a fabulous game of tag!  This year all of the kids were old enough to make the jumps between rows, so it was incredibly tricky to tag them.

A few last pictures before heading home as the sunset.