Happy Halloween

Halloween is finally here, so our magician and magical princess dressed up once again to have a lucrative night on the town. We started off the evening with a neighborhood potluck across the street from our house, then we walked around the neighborhood with our next door neighbors. It was a brief evening because of the rain but the kids scored a LOT of candy in a very short amount of time. Success!

Pumpkin carving

It's always a mess each year when we carve pumpkins, mostly because the kids won't participate.  This year was a pleasant change though as both wanted to be actively involved.  They drew faces on paper, I transferred them and they scraped out the "gooey parts". Always the teacher, Jill found a great lesson to teach. We all estimated the number of seeds in the pumpkin and then the kids grouped the seeds in piles of ten and counted. Our initial guesses were all too low. It's amazing how many seeds that thing had.

More Halloween Adventures

With the grandparents still in town we had a few other things to attend to - namely trunk-or-treat and the halloween train.  Trunk-or-treat is at church - people back their cars up, open up their trunks (decorated of course) and the kids go around and get candy.  The kids always love an excuse to get dressed up and be given candy so it's right up their alley.

The train ride was new this year. Jill found a local park with a scale train that was done up for the holiday. We grabbed food, had a picnic, and rode the train (after quite a long wait). The ride was very fun - packed full of decorations and highschoolers in costumes dancing around. There was even a person in a giant peep costume.

After all the fun the grandparents took a rest on the back porch by the fire. All in all, a great weekend.

Alexis is 4

For some reason it's even harder for me to believe Alexis is four than it was for me to believe Evan turned 7. For her birthday, Grandma, Grandpa, B and Mini came down and we headed out to Mt. Vernon. There was a fall festival there this weekend complete with games, horse riding, and apple roasting. After those festivities we returned home and did Alexis's birthday ceremony and presents. When Alexis opens a present, she immediately wants to open it and play with it. There was a lot of dressing up being done.  One of her favorite presents this year was a jewelry box that played music.  She kept playing the song over and over and dancing.  After dinner there was cake - and it was good. It's so fantastic being able to have all the grandparents around for a birthday. Thanks for making it happen.

Vienna Halloween parade

Vienna holds an annual Halloween parade and it's actually pretty huge. Jill and our neighbor staked out seats 8 hours in advance so we had a prime spot to go and watch the festivities.  There were bands, floats, and kids on bikes in costumes.  We don't even know how long it went because it started raining and we packed up and left.  It was still a lot of fun though.

Farm #3

There has been a lot of farm already this year but not enough so here we are at farm #3, Great Country Farm (if you are reading carefully, if you count apple picking as a farm -- which you can argue you could -- this would be #4). For some reason there's a huge cow out front so how can you not take a picture. There's a huge bouncy bubble at this farm and the kids love jumping on it. Left to themselves I bet they could be there for hours. This farm is one of our favorites because it has a pig race. The race itself is cheesy, not super exciting, and over in less than 10 seconds, but still, it's a pig race, so you have to go see it. There's also ample animal feeding (though not ample hand sanitizer).

I'm not sure but I think this may be the end of farm season, and that's fine by me.

Halloween Cookies

Our new next door neighbors are so fun and crafty.  They're always up to amazing projects.   Evan happened to spy a Halloween gingerbread  house when he was playing over there one day and somehow talked his way into getting us invited over for house/ cookie decorating.  Cookies and candy?  This was up their alley.

Farm #2

I wasn't around for this one but Jill wanted to get some more fall fun in.  She took them to the Burke Nursery Pumpkin Playground.  When I talked to them it sounded like they had fun with the hay ride and the slides.

Farm #1

By now you know we do farms in the fall -- big time.  Cox farm was the first stop on our list this year and we had a great time. There's no shortage of hay, rides, hayrides, slides, animals, food, or music there. It was pretty hot out - I think we bought six bottles of water - but it would have been all rain in Seattle so how can we complain?