Halloween 2011

Star Wars!! Our family theme this year for Halloween was complete with jedi's, an evil emperor, and the cutest ewoks ever seen...

...bonus points for spotting R2D2

The bad guys: Darth Vader, the Emperor, and a Sith apprentice...


The good guys: 3 cuddly ewoks, Obi-Wan, 3 skilled Jedi's, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Yoda, Princess Leia, and Queen Amidala...


Aw... baby ewoks are the best... and are super cute, even if they are sad. :)


Our little family... Ewok Claire got past her fussiness and fell fast asleep by this point. And Emma was getting skilled at her Leia poses...



Trick or Treat!

Scout and Caroline enjoying their late night pizza snack... these babies melt my heart. :)

Claire was too busy sleeping to join the snack time fun... Ben learned that sleeping ewoks make comfy pillows

So, now we get to go back in time and catch up over the last weeks activities. I haven't been great at posting as I go recently, so looks like this gets to be one big Halloween post...

For Family Home Evening this past Monday, we did a Halloween relay race - we split into teams and had to complete 3 games one after the other as fast as we could - first: drop the candy corns in the jar, second: wrap your partner as a mummy (emptying an entire toilet paper roll), and third: eat a donut off a string. It was a messy activity. :)






We did some trunk or treat hopping this year - we went to the Lee's trunk or treat on Friday night, and then they all came to ours on Saturday night. I didn't get any pictures from Friday night, and just a few from Saturday, but we had a lot of fun and got soooo much candy!

Yoda at the craft table

Me and my sweet Ewok

They taught the Thriller dance as one of the activities at our Trunk or Treat - Ben's mom is always the fun one and was quick to the get our kids over there and dancing...


We carved pumpkins on Sunday - I'm never that thrilled about carving pumpkins at first, but once we get going, it's always fun and I love the finished jack-o-lanterns. Ben got creative as usual...













the resemblance is uncanny


I didn't carve a pumpkin, but my contribution to the pumpkin party was making a pumpkin pie, using a real pumpkin! I baked the pumpkin and then scraped out the flesh and pureed it in the food processor. I felt very domestic! I love pumpkin pie!

On Halloween morning, Becca had her preschool Halloween party. Did you know that it was 90 degrees outside on Halloween? Where did the cool temperatures go? I'm ready to wear long pants now please! Anyway, the party was warm, but fun to see Becca in her element. She has a super cute preschool class...











Guess what?! Claire sits! On Halloween morning, she demonstrated her new found talent for the first time. She's wobbly, but was able to sit up unassisted for a few minutes before toppling. She is so cute...






So, now that Halloween has come and gone, I guess it's time to decorate for Thanksgiving... oh my! Where has the year gone?!

Pumpkin Patch

Before getting to our pumpkin patch outing, here's some other random photos I've collected over the past week...

We finished up one last 'pinterest' project to officially complete the Halloween decor for the year... Ghost feet!...

My cute hubby basically did this project on his own, painting the canvas board black, and picking out a frame, and we worked together to get the kids feet painted white and put in the right place on the board - We were going to put the kids names underneath their feet, but I knew my handwriting with a paint brush would be less than attractive... so now the kids like to try and name everyone's foot - we learned that Jake and Becca have the same size feet. :)

I've discovered that cheapo spider rings are handy when packaging up cookie gifts (October is definitely the only time of year I accept plastic spiders in my home - they almost look too real and I wouldn't want to find one of those in my sheets)...



Our AC has been giving us trouble off and on all summer long - thankfully we have two units, one of which works great, so when the other gives us trouble, we can still be in our house. But we are hoping that we've seen the last of the ac repair man (at least I'd love to not have any issues at all next summer... knock on wood!) now that we've had the faulty part found out and replaced. We were without ac in our downstairs for a few days while the repair was sorted out and completed, so we treated ourselves to a dinner out! After dinner we went out for ice cream...



I've been trying to take Jake to library storytime recently... he often wants to escape before it's over and find something else to do - but sometimes he really loves it, especially when they sing songs and get to move around...


We spent Friday afternoon at MacDonald's Ranch to visit the pumpkin patch. They also had a great petting zoo, pony rides, games, and hay rides and maze...






















October sure is fun and Halloween is almost here! I'm getting excited about costumes and all of us dressing up. We're doing Star Wars this year and I can't wait!

Claire, Cookies, and Climbing

My sweet, smart, pretty Claire is 5 months old! Where is the time going?! I love my Claire - she is perfect in every way and is just the BEST baby... I'm biased, yes, but she is just right for me and our growing family. One more month till your half-birthday cute baby girl!


For Family Home Evening, we decorated Halloween sugar cookies (which I smartly made earlier in the day, along with the frosting... I'm slowly learning that in order to enjoy a stress free cookie decorating activity with the kids, I need it all ready to go well ahead of time) - we took some plates to neighbors and I also took some to Emma's teacher - I had to skip out towards the end of the cookie party, so that I could go to Emma's parent teacher conference. How nice of Emma's teacher to have a 7pm time slot that I could snag so I wouldn't need to find a babysitter for the kids! That hard working lady deserved some cookies! :)






I know many of you mom's with young kids can relate to the misery that the 4 o'clock hour can bring... it seems that 4-7pm are rough lately - by 5 o'clock it feels like a mad house - Claire wants to eat, I'm still trying to get dinner made, Emma has homework to do, Jake is getting crazy and running into walls and hitting Becca, etc, etc. I'm not the only one that suffers the 4pm blues right? Well, I found a solution... dinner at the park! Today we avoided the craziness all together, left the house, picked up some fast food and ate and played at the park till 6:30... then we drove home and the kids all went right to bed. I am brilliant! haha. :) We had such a pleasant, stress-free evening...

Giraffe's and my Little Reader

Ben was working Saturday (as he often is), but I love to play on Saturdays, especially since the girls are off of school, so we headed to the zoo. Whenever I'm at a loss of where to take the kids for an outing, we often end up at the zoo, thanks to our wonderful zoo pass. :) I'm sorry to report that it's 100 degrees outside again. What a bummer - the 75 degree days last week were just a tease. Rude. Despite the heat we went to the zoo anyway and had a great time!

They have a new area at the zoo where you can feed the giraffe's! It was so awesome! And we got really up close and personal with their long crazy tongues. :)





It seems that whenever we go to the zoo, the kids are more entertained by the animals NOT in cages - like the squirrels and birds roaming around. Here they were trying to entice a squirrel over with their goldfish crackers.

FYI- When it's hot and you are at the zoo, you spend most of your time playing in the water and drinking ICEE's...









We always stop to see the turtles on the way out :)

Later, when Ben got home from work, we headed to Chucky Cheese for dinner and to play. So, Chucky Cheese is most definitely not my first choice of places to hang out, but once a year or so, we somehow end up there. :) Becca chose it as her reward party for completing her first set of Dick and Jane books! I'm so excited to see that my little Rebecca is turning into a reader! She's doing amazingly and in the last few months has been growing in her confidence to read new words she's never seen before - at first she used to say to me "but I don't know that word!", but now she says "it's okay, I can figure it out!" I'm just so proud of her...



Jake was less than happy on this ride for some reason... he just wanted to get out! haha




Thanks Becca for the fun party!

My Jake

One of our preschool activities this week was to count out and sort goldfish crackers into numbered sections of a egg carton. Jake often took the "one for me, one for the egg carton" approach. :)


I love my Jake - he is crazy sometimes, but he's also so funny and entertaining. He loved pulling a self proclaimed fish face...


For some reason I just love this video of Jake - he is so quirky and amusing...



Becca asks me pretty much everyday if she'll be having a playdate that day. I'm glad that once a week she gets to play with her preschool and carpool buddies - Landon and Dagen. This week it was our turn for playgroup at our house - I was cleaning up after lunch and when I came upstairs Becca and Landon were dressed up as a princess and a knight (Dagen was out of town and not here)... Jake was dressed up as a flying monkey (from Becca's old Halloween costume from last year), but the kids were pretending that he was the dragon. So Landon was trying to slay the dragon and protect princess Becca - it was so darn cute :)