Halloween 2015

Up until now our family has always dressed as a theme for Halloween. Superheroes, pirates, astronauts, firemen, and so forth. But this year Lincoln insisted on being Harry Potter and Ivan insisted on being an astronaut. Try as I might, I couldn't think of how to tie those two together into anything that made sense. And then Adelia wanted to be a My Little Pony, and I stopped my attempt to coordinate costumes. I found Ollie and Rue costumes we still had lying around from years passed (a dragon for Ollie and a parrot for Rue).

I was sad. I love dressing up as a family...going a little over-the-top is what makes Halloween a fun holiday for me. But of course, I know that I need to let my kids have their opinions about what costumes they want to wear too. And I cheerfully helped them pull them together, and all that. It's not like I was trying to be a Debbie-downer about Halloween, but I was just a bit nostalgic I guess. I dressed up for the ward party as Rosie the Riveter, but I wasn't overly happy with it.

The night before Halloween, I was at Walmart looking for colored hairspray to do a beautiful Rainbow Dash mane on Adelia with, and the idea struck me that I could dress up as fire, and use some of the extra hairspray to make my hair look like a flame. My hair is the perfect length to be a flame, if I spike it straight up. Now I was getting excited!

Aaron wasn't planning to dress up. But I got home and started talking about how I was going to be fire, and suggested that he could be ice if he wanted to. He didn't want to paint his face blue. I told him I wasn't going to paint my face, just makeup. We spent some time looking up how to do frozen looking makeup. Turns out all you have to do is use baby powder (a lot of it) and hair gel and it turns out really well. Aaron decided to humor me and dress up with me!! Yay, a theme! We looked awesome, if I do say so myself. (Although a lot of people thought we were characters from Inside Out, instead of fire and ice.)

And my kids' costumes all turned out really cute too. Although Ivan, that little stinker, had Aaron make him an astronaut helmet and backpack, and then wore them for about point three seconds to get his picture taken and then stored them in the wagon all night because he didn't want to carry them. Nobody could tell what he was. Oh well.

I turned the pumpkin carving completely 100% over to the kids this year. I sent them outside with the little pumpkin knives and bowls. Ivan and Lincoln cut the lids, Ollie and Del scooped out the guts. Ivan carved Ollie's and Lincoln carved Ruby's. All I did was cook the pumpkin seeds. I think we'll do it this way from here on out. :)

We had dinner at Aaron's mom's house, and then came home and hit up our neighborhood for some trick-or-treating. The weather was beautiful and warm. Of course it wouldn't be trick-or-treating if we didn't take the wagon. Ruby rode in it the whole night and had a blast. She was a bit cranky when we left the house, and I thought for sure I'd be bringing her home to put her to bed any minute. But she loved the wagon, and probably being out and seeing all the action. She didn't make hardly a peep for the whole two hours we trick-or-treated.

We it was over we came home and put kids to bed. Then Aaron and I cuddled up on the couch with my favorite Halloween treats (Grandma Lemmon's Owl Cookies, Granny Jan's Halloween Wassail, and my Mom's pumpkin seed recipe) and watched my Mets play in the World Series. They are doing terribly, and it's so sad and kind of embarrassing. Maybe next year.

FHE With Kelly and Esther

For FHE tonight we invited Kelly and Esther and their kids to come to Jaker's Pumpkin Patch with us, then afterwords back to our house for hot chocolate and a short lesson. It's great having them live a little closer now, because we get to see them a lot more often.

Fall Festival at Gramma Tam's

My kids have been begging me to take them to "a real-live graveyard", so we stopped in to see Papa Stew while we were up in Hooper today. It was slightly less spooky than they'd imagined it would be, but we had a nice chat about eternal families.

The Fall Festival at Gramma Tam's was a rocking party this year. Good food, a little three-legged racing, bobbing for apples, and musical chairs.

#iheartfall

Springville in October is my absolute favorite. They decided not to plant corn this year. All summer long, I missed the waving silky stalks next door; but that was before October revealed the hundreds of ripened pumpkins sprinkled over a brown field with the fall mountains sprayed in reds, yellows, golds, oranges, green, and browns as a backdrop. Looking out my window is breathtaking. I've never been able to take a picture to do it justice.

My garden is puttering out slowly. But I harvested a few onions, and a bowl full of beautiful fresh tomatoes. I'll miss them terribly after the freeze.

We've had a few rainy days, which Ollie and Del took to mean that it was time to bust out the snow gear. I think not. Although we could use a heavy snow this year, I'm not anticipating it with much excitement. I'll take the rain though...

For the most part, I think the kids are enjoying their days. Rue is growing like a weed, and getting so big. She's a little sassy-pants too. She likes to stand up when she rides in the wagon, she climbs the stairs all by herself. She has more personality in her little pinkie than I have in my whole body.

Soccer is over and basketball has begun. Ivan is practicing his dribbling skills in his spare time these days.

Nightly torture for everyone involved.

Ivan made an ice cream stand out of a box, the kids have been having a lot of fun with it.

Me and my girls.

Adelia's "Lovelys" she is inventing. They are robots that will do all her chores and run lemonade stands to earn money for Adelia to spend on all the things she wants. Haha! 

I started working on painting Adelia's dresser again. I had to go over the teal with a different kind of paint because the kind I was using before started peeling. Now I'm in the middle of painting a stencil on the front of the drawers in yellow and green. It's going to be awesome when it's finished.

And here are a couple of fun Type Three fall outfits I put together. My orange pants are freakin' awesome, ya know? :)