Lions and Tin Mans and Scarecrows... Oh My!

I'm not going to lie... I'm pretty glad that Halloween is OVER. I usually LOVE Halloween time, but it's been oh so difficult this year with the morning sickness. In past pregnancies I've been due earlier in the spring, so by the time Halloween rolls around I'm past the ickiness and feeling better. But since I'm not due till late May, everything is shifted and I've been mostly just dragging myself through the holiday. I most definitely anticipate a full recovery by Thanksgiving, so this makes me even more excited for turkey day! :)

Anyway, despite my grumbling insides, we really did create some wonderful Halloween memories... particularly with our costumes... they turned out great! Anything that required sewing was done by Carol, otherwise this would have never been pulled off. We did Wizard of Oz this year, so the cast includes: Dorothy (Emma), Tin Man (Adam), Scarecrow (Ben D), Lion (Ben L), Wicked Witch of the West (me!), Wicked Witch of the East (Carol), Glinda (Emily), a flying monkey (Becca), a Lolipop Munchkin (Jake), a palace guard (Peter), and the Wizard of Oz (Clyde)... you can't see it in the picture very well, but Clyde is wearing a great green jacket. :)



Ben's family drove up to our place on Saturday evening and we had a fall dinner together, and then got in our costumes and headed to our ward's trunk or treat. Since Halloween was a Sunday this year, we opted not to trick or treat door to door on the holiday, so this trunk or treat was the kids only hope for collecting candy... thank goodness it was such a great turnout - the kids got plenty!















After collecting candy, we headed back to our place and Ben served up his pumpkin pie ice cream that he made. He's an ice cream genious, btw. :)

To backtrack, Emma had a little pumpkin party at school on Friday...

Emma and her favorite school friend, Sarah




And earlier in the week we carved pumpkins and made yummy caramel apples...





And now I say hip hip hooray for November! Here's to Harry Potter 7, cooler weather, and turkey and mashed potatoes! :)

Ghosts, popcorn, and cookies!

Party Party! Off to another party! This one was for playgroup. Jake came along this time in his lollipop munchkin outfit. I didn't get a great shot of him in it, but you should get the idea. He also has a cute big lollipop he carries around, but I didn't get a pic of that... maybe next time. For the party they had a ghost hunt, coloring and crafting, cookie decorating, candy walk, Halloween songs, and plenty of yummy popcorn and root beer! Even though it's been over a year since being in the ward, I love my Bellair playgroup! :)

Click on the collage to see it bigger :)

mmm... little powdered donuts...

Becca had her preschool Halloween party yesterday morning - this was her first time trying out her flying monkey costume (we're all doing a Wizard of Oz theme this year), and I think it turned out really cute! Ben's mom made the wings for her and I put together the rest... I like her little brown nose. :) And a special thanks to my wonderful friend Lindsie for offering to watch my crazy Jake for me during the party... it was fun to get to help out and hang out with Becca and not have to chase Jake around.

Singing their Halloween songs they've been practicing all month



Halloween parade! They really enjoyed waving at the cars as they came by... we appreciated the people who actually honked and waved... some people just seemed to ignore the super cute dressed up kids on the corner - what's wrong with them?!




Becca LOVED the donut eating! She was all business and didn't use her hands... she did eventually get some good big bites out of it





So, one party down and 4 more to go! Halloween is seriously crazy with parties... at least when you have kids. I really do love it, but hoping I can have the energy to get through it... doubling up on zofran this weekend, for sure! :)

Cookies... and exciting news!

We decorated sugar cookies last night. Mmmmm....






I love the short and fat Frankenstein and Mummy. I saw online the idea to make mummies using your typical gingerbread cookie cutter. Ben then thought of the idea to make a Frankenstein too... we tried to square out his head a bit before cooking it. :)

And now for our exciting news... we're expecting! Baby 4! I'm 9 weeks along, very happy... and very sick. But I've had a couple better days in a row, so maybe I'm on the upswing of the morning sickness. Here's hoping - I'm trying with all my might to get moving with Halloween activities, but it's been difficult. I was thankful that the stars aligned and I felt pretty good yesterday, along with Ben having a day off, so we plowed ahead and did our cookie decorating activity. My favorite things lately have been evening baths, caffeine free diet coke, Zofran (anti-nausea meds), and my Ben. He's been doing absolutely everything the past few weeks and he does it with a smile. I'm so thankful to him! I had a second ultrasound this morning and the little babe looks like a bean, but I love him/her already. We should find out gender close to Christmas time, and the due date is May 27th.

Nursery!

Jake turned 18 months old on Sept 29th... he's getting so big! And he started going to Nursery at church! Yay! I love my Jake - and so do all the ladies :)

Some silly stuff...

I'm happy that it's October! We were finally able to hang up the very cute Halloween banner that we made (we= my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and I) - isn't it fun?! I like that a skeleton head is the 'O'.

And now for something random about each of the kiddos-

Emma and Becca usually get up 30 minutes before I do. They play upstairs, sometimes will watch some tv (Emma is clever and knows how to turn it on and even select kid shows from the dvr list), and occasionally I come out to find that they've been raiding the kitchen for an early morning snack- ie: peanut butter jar with a spoon. They've also been known to find my camera and take pictures of stuff, which I then find as little surprises when I next upload pics to my computer. As has been done before, Emma practiced her camera skills on Becca...

My messy haired, very cute Rebecca

So, remember that Becca is a cute girl, ok... because this next picture is creepy...



We had gone to World Market to browse and pick up some fun Halloween goodies, including these creepy "monster mouth" suckers.

Another surprise picture I found on my camera was this one of Emma's "Good list". She must have snapped a shot of it. She's shown me this list before. It's actually a good and a bad list, but there's never been anything on the bad side of the list, which I find amusing. Here she's tallied up people in her life she deems as "good", including friends from her school class. I do remember Emma debating on whether little brother Jake should be on the good list (he's hastily scribbled in at the very bottom)...



Now that Jake is a real pro at climbing up on stuff, he's recently been enjoying daily visits to the piano. He climbs up to sit on the little bench and plays away. He sometimes seems to take it very seriously.