Pumpkin Carving

This year I waited too late and couldn't find regular orange pumpkins. I picked up this last overpriced, noncarvable weirdest pumpkin as a last minute one.

As you can imagine my pumpkin was laughed at and made fun of. 

I kinda liked the weirdness of it. 

A few days later I saw that Kroger had a new stock of pumpkins come in and I grabbed 3 as quickly as I could. My kids were so excited to have there own regular orange pumpkins. 

The past few years we have either painted or glued things on our pumpkins and haven't carved them. This year we decided we would carve them. Baby A had never carved a pumpkin before so she was a bit confused but it all. 

She wasn't so sure about the inside guts either. 

It was right down my boys alley and they dug right in. 

Scooter had his cleaned out in no time. The boys drew their own faces on their pumpkins and I drew a puppy face on Baby A's pumpkin. (she is obsessed with dogs). 

After we (Tim and I did the carving) started carving them, we quickly remembered why we always painted them before. Carving is no easy task and boy is it messy! 

Baby A with her puppy pumpkin 

Scooter with his creation 

Rascal with his creation. 

These didn't last long. The southern heat and humidity made them mold within a few days but they made it through Halloween and the weird one...... well it's staying on my table through Thanksgiving. 

Halloween 2013

My computers hate me today, one crashed and the other will not upload pictures so I'm posting this from my phone. 

We did trunk or treat last night with our church and I had quite an interesting trio with me. 

A cowgirl

A werewolf 

And a vampire!! 

They had tons of fun and as always got tons of candy. I hope to post about a field trip and pumpkin carving soon. 

Happy Halloween!!!!!!!!

Random

It's been a while since I had a random thought post. Honestly I was so busy during October that I didn't think I would be able to keep up with writing about everything. Nothing has changed but I am so overwhelmed that a good random post seemed to help me just have a brain dump. Here goes.....

~ Cooler weather is here and we have enjoyed having a few of these already:

~ I need to have a big Baby A update real soon. She is now in a toddler bed and her bedroom is such a cute girly big girl room now. I have pictures so I try to get that post up next week.

~ We have now rid our home of the last baby items. It was weird to see it go but BELIEVE me I was THRILLED to see it all go. It's exciting to think of the next phases of our children's lives. They are all 3 growing so fast and the time only seems to fly by faster lately.

~ I picked up crocheting. I am loving the big chunky crocheted scarfs and was not willing to fork out at least $40 for one. So I started making my own. I am loving it so far. It's a great thing for me to pick up in car line, doctor's offices or right before I go to bed. I'll post a picture of it once I am done (hopefully while it is still scarf weather).

~ Halloween was a huge hit this year. I was SO WORRIED about the candy since we have to be so careful with Rascal's allergy. Well we are blessed with so many thoughtful friends and family and so many went out of their way to make sure my kids had safe candy. I'm talking goody bags and full size candy bars. It's so weird what Rascal can and can't have...like regular size plain Hershey bars are fine but king size or mini plain Hershey bars are made on the same equipment as nuts so he can't have them. If a "safe" candy has been bagged with a nut type of candy then that means the "safe" candy is no longer safe. I was so worried that he wouldn't have any candy that I bought them plenty of candy myself. At the end of the night, here was their loot:

That day they were able to wear their costumes to school so here are the pictures I got before school:

He loved his face painted and we added more that night before trunk or treat. 

Rascal went like this since they weren't allowed to wear masks. And Baby A??? Well let's just say she's Rascal's shadow, that very accurate!! 

Here she is later that day before we headed to the school for parties. She wore this dress last year too:

She was so little and had NO hair :) 

I didn't get any pictures of them at trunk or treat but they were so over pictures by that time that it was probably for the best. 

I did get this picture of Rascal sound asleep on the way to trunk or treat:

~  Switching gears...... I have been listening to Christmas music for a good 2 weeks (or more) now. What's great is that Baby A loves it too and when she hears Jingle Bells she will sing it the rest of the day. I am so ready for Christmas to get here. My tree is up and ready to be fluffed and decorated. Tim picked up an authentic German made Advent calendar when he was in Germany a few weeks ago. I can't wait to pull it out and use it this year. He knows me so well and knows my love for Christmas and decorating for it. So he picked me up an authentic German made smoker. It's a little wooden German man that you put an incense cone inside and it smells your house up like Christmas. Tim was told that it is the traditional decoration in Germany and that everyone has one in their homes. I think the little man is so adorable and can't wait to set him out and use him.

~ Tim was in Seattle this week and one night I seriously needed quiet!  Miraculously my kids laid down together and watched Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving:

Oh and we had another added to the crew that night:

 

We tried Heidi inside that night. I wish so badly that she could be inside with us. She is the smartest most well behaved dog I have ever had. She laid on her blanket while we ate dinner, tried to get on the furniture once but after being told no she never tried it again. She kept an eye out for the kids at every moment too:

She's laying on their blanket in the picture above :) and she has her eyes on what the kids are doing. 

Look closely...... Baby A is using Heidi as a pillow while watching TV. 

I would take Heidi out on her leash to go to the bathroom at night but she would only stand by my side and was on high alert to every sound around us. She is such a great protector and there is no doubt she loves all of us so much. 

However, the next morning I felt the affects of having her inside. My allergies were horrible and I had a bad headache. I even was on allergy medicine the entire time she was in and it didn't help much.

Truth be told I think she prefers to be outside anyways. 

Halloween Family Night

This year my boys asked if we could have a Halloween themed family night again. My intentions were to decorate like I did last year but this little girl got sick. 

I know she doesn't look like she's sick but this was the 3rd day of her running a fever and complaining of her throat hurting. We went to the doctor early Friday morning and found out it was just a virus that had to run it's course. 

I went to checkout and realized I had forgotten my wallet at home!! So that meant no buying Halloween decorations and going straight home (on a very low tank of gas). 

I had all the stuff in the house to make cupcakes so I whipped up these little guys......... Homemade chocolate coffee cupcakes with vanilla cream cheese icing and a marshmallow mummy on top. The boys were very impressed and I think that made up for the lack of decorations :)

We had chili dogs for dinner that night (and it was a cold rainy night...perfect for chili) and cupcakes for dessert. 

After dessert it was time to decorate pumpkins!! 

Ok so the plan was for the boys to paint their pumpkins and Baby A to glue tissue paper on hers. A toddler + Paint = a giant mess!!

That plan went out the window after Baby A was done gluing tissue paper on hers and the boys were still painting. So she grabbed a paint brush right off her brothers paint plate and helped herself to painting her pumpkin. Once I saw the sneaky girl's move, I didn't have the heart   energy to tell her no! 

Then once Baby A was in bed the boys played a hilarious game of Twister. Seriously I wish you could hear the laughter in this picture. 

It was a super fun night and I am so glad that the boys look forward to it so much!

Wordless Wednesday: Costumes 2012

Halloween 2011 (part 2)

 Sunday night our church held their annual Trunk or Treat. Let me just say, any extra activities (especially church ones where we help out lots) is chaos with 3 kids. Those with 4 or more kids I have no clue how you do it. I feel like we are the perfect example of a chaotic family that has no control over their kids. So with that said, I had very little enjoyment during this, since I was paranoid about where my kids where at all times. Every year we about have one of our children run over by a car trying to park for trunk or treat. They are always so excited to see friends and family that they dart across the parking lot and almost get hit. This year thankfully we didn't have that happen and the kids all seemed to have a good time.

 Baby A was so excited about getting candy. She is the youngest kid I know of that took .5 seconds to realize what candy was. She was so MAD that she couldn't have ALL the candy. After every trunk she would want to sit down and eat what she just got. Well that wasn't going to happen and when I told her no or come on she threw a HUGE fit. Even caving in and giving her one sucker didn't help... she only wanted more and more.

So into the Babyhawk she went and I wore her around from trunk to trunk and hid every single piece of candy out of her site.

 Sweet little Levi came dressed up as a packet of Ketchup. He looked all cozy warm in it too.

Here are my two trick or treating pros. Scooter wasn't such a fan of his Alien costume since he couldn't see very well out of it and it was a bit bulky for him. 

Rascal wore his mask half of the time but said it tickled his face. Why do I stress out over costumes every year just for them not to wear the whole outfit?? 

 

We did let the kids get their faces painted . Scooter wanted a dragon and I dreaded getting this off his face. Thankfully it came off much easier than his beard did, the day he was a pirate. 

 Rascal wanted a tiger at first but then saw a picture of this dinosaur and changed his mind. I must admit it was the cutest face painting I had ever seen. When Rascal opened his mouth it looked like the Dinosaur opened his mouth too.

While I was over with the boys getting their faces painted Tim heard over the speaker that Scooter was one of the winners of the $50 Toys R Us gift cards. He was one excited Dragon. :)

We then all sat down for a yummy hot dog and chips and tried to warm ourselves up. The boys always have such a wonderful time at our church's trunk or treat and we always come home loaded with tons of candy.
Now I only hope that next year will be a tiny bit easier than this year was. Maybe I ought to dress one of them up like a dog so I can put a leash on them......totally kidding!

Halloween 2011 (part 1)

As I mentioned before, Our Halloween Fun started on Friday. That morning I took Baby A t get pumpkins (I waited too late and had to get small ones) and she loved hers. She tried to roll it several times so I think she thought it was a ball. Then she tried so hard to pick it up and get it on the steps. Once she did she clapped at her hard work.

Friday was the school parties so I dressed Baby A in her candy corn dress I made her and we headed to the school. Scooter's class didn't have a party (they said they are too old but I think that is CRAZY!) but I made the witch hat cookies and took them in for a special snack for the class. They all really liked that a lot.

Then I headed to Rascal's class to join all the fun they were having. They had a skittle toss game, a pumpkin making station, a candy pattern station, a mummy station (which I worked at) and a cupcake decorating station. The kids really had fun and I really enjoyed helping out. Of course I forgot to take pictures but thankfully, a mom of Rascal's friend sent me these she took.

Then it was back home to continue decorating for our Family night Fun. Again I didn't get pictures of everything but here are a few that I did get.

I put the pumpkins on the table and decorated them with rubber rats. The boys had no clue I had bought all the fun decorations and loved them all. They came home to a decorated house and thought it was super cool.

 I saw this idea on pintrest on how to make witch's curtains so I did it for the doorways. Mine didn't turn out as well but they were still cute hanging from the doorways (again I got no pictures of mine). 

I saw a few banner ideas on pintrest (here and here) and put them together to come up with this one:

I got the witch legs hanging out of the fireplace from this picture on pintrest and changed it up some.

The boys really liked that and talked about it for a good long while.

Then we painted the too small to carve pumpkins. W might could have carved them but it would have been hard and since they were cool with painting them, I happily gave in. No yucky pumpkins to gut !

Scooter painted an angry bird on his pumpkin:

Rascal painted a funny face and wanted everyone to know that the red you see on his is blood! Nice huh?!?!

I painted Baby A's since we didn't have washable paint. Pardon my horribly uncentered iPhone picture.

Me and the boys also decorated cupcakes but I forgot to take a picture of them. Here is my inspiration picture:

Ours weren't quite this neat but they were still really yummy!

We had pizza for dinner, served with grape kool-aid that had spiders floating in the punch bowl (again no picture sorry). 

After it got dark, Tim took the boys out for a spooky walk around the yard. Now let me tell you, I wouldn't even dream of doing this myself, that is why Baby A and I stayed indoors where it was warm and very well lit!  Our property is a good size, with lots of trees and we have tons of woods around our neighborhood. All that equals up to wildlife and some of that wildlife I never want to run into. 

After walking around the yard some, Tim and the boys took some of the cupcakes over to The Homes' across the street. Tim said on the way back home, they heard a coyote howl in the distance and the boys took off towards our house. That was it no more scary late night walk for them. Tim and I had a good laugh at the two scaredy cats. 

We had a lot of fun and it was a great way to kick off our fun filled weekend. 

I will post about trunk or treat in another post. I don't think I should put that many more pictures in this post :)