Pumpkins & Candy

October for me is a busy month...Jason's birthday, 10 days later is Sammi's birthday, Sammi's birthday party, pumpkin patch (my fave for pics of the kids), pumpkin carving (my fave event of Halloween), then trick or treating. Needless to say, October has the most pages in my scrapbook than any other month. But I love all of these events! I had to combine two into one post.

First, the pumpkin patch. This year I waited too late and went the day before Halloween. So the pumpkins were not plentiful. My fault. But I still got some good pictures.

I like to get Halloween shirts for them, but I either could not find any for boys or if I found anything, it wasn't cute. I settled for solid black. :)

Luckily they had a bounce house and slide that I could bribe them with over and over. "Just one more picture and you can go in the bounce house" I said that so much that smarty Sammi said "you said that 5 pictures ago". Dang it, I hate it when they learn to count and spell! Just like when Jason spelled "ice cream" to me the other night when it was too close to their bedtime and Sammi said "I know what you spelled. You spelled ice cream and I want some too". Doh!



I was at Michael's last week and came across a Haunted House Cookie kit that Sammi wanted to make with me. My sister and her kids did one and they looked like they had fun doing it. I thought, sure we can do that too! I started reading the instructions first (take a clue men!) and quickly realized that this was not a job for a 6 year old. I made the icing (it came with everything but the water needed) and piped it along the walls and roof to build and found out that this was not going to be easy. You know things aren't going to go well when you start snapping at your kid because the icing was dripping and not thick like it needed to be and the walls were falling as she innocently asked me how it was going. Really Alli, get a grip!

Here is the picture on the box of how it was supposed to look:

And here is what it turned out to be:


One word: UGLY! The consistency of the icing was not meant for detailed work and the black icing it came with was almost non-existent. So just orange and green it was! The kids put on the candy corn and I did the rest. As you can see the green icing was constantly dripping off the eaves and onto part of the house. Nice. The only thing that looked good was the ghost...because it was pre-made and only required a dab of icing to glue it on the house. :) Yes, I am really hard on myself.

Below are the pumpkins Sammi and I carved. The first one Sammi drew on it for me to cut out. You can't see but she put a small scar on the forehead like she has. Cute.


And this one is mine. I had a hard time getting a good picture of it in the dark to really show the cut out. I use the patterns you can buy and have done that for years. I love doing it and the detailed work it requires. It's Dracula with a spooky sky behind him.

Now for Halloween. We go every year to my friend Amy's neighborhood. It's very picturesque with tons of kids and parents walking up and down the sidewalk, in the streets, people decorating their entry ways or garages. So fun. There were more parents than kids, so we were able to keep an eye out on every kid. Whew! We started before it got dark, much to the surprise to several, so they got in a good 2 hours of trick or treating. For some reason, Joshua was clingy the last hour and wanted me to carry him between houses. My arms were sore! Normally he wants down if I hold him, but I think his poor little legs were tired. So I sent Jason back to our car to get the small stroller.

We knew they were done when 3 of them laid down on the front lawn of a house. We got so much candy that it filled an entire plastic grocery sack. Now I am trying to give it to friends and family we see....I don't need to eat it and neither do my hyped-up kids!

It was fun fun fun and we were pooped pooped pooped when we got home!