Fall Festivities

 First, let us start this post off right.  Behold, the sweetest little face in the history of mankind:

 I love her so much, eyebrow dandruff and all.

We had a great fall.  (It's pathetic that I have to update according to seasons, now.  Having three kids is just so busy.  It's wonderful and hard.)  We did a number of fun activities with the kids because Ben had a pretty good schedule, the weather was beautiful, and I've been recovering just great.  We went to a fun little pumpkin patch in Spanish Fork one evening and let the kids play around.

 And where was Sammi in the first two pictures, you ask?  Why, she was sitting on time-out missing out on all the fun.  She has had quite the difficult transition to having a new sister.  She loves the baby so much, but she hates her mother now.  She tells me every day that she doesn't like me, doesn't want to be my friend, wants me to live in a different house, and wants me to be another little girl's mom.  This is usually accompanied by a pinch or a hit.  She sat on the stairs on time-out every time she said this to me, but it didn't seem to be very effective or make her repentant at all.  So instead we threatened to not let her go to the pumpkin patch and made her sit and watch Emerson play and have fun for 20 minutes or so.  She felt it.  She was sorry.  And then luckily all was forgiven and we had a great evening together.

 The next fun activity was going to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point with Grandma J.  The kids had an absolute blast, and my mom and I were so tired by the end.  They had a dress up tent in Pumpkin Princess Playland, and I bet you can't guess who loved every minute of that...Here she is pictured singing the Ariel song on the little stage, thinking she is pretty big stuff.

 

Grandma and Grandpa J hosted the First Annual Grandkid Halloween Party.  They had the kids dress up in their costumes and we made cute little festive treats like witch hats, Oreo spiders, and dirt and worms.  Then we played fun games like Halloween Bingo and Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin.  The kids had a great time and said they wished every day was a Halloween party.  We finished the evening with a festive little dinner of witch fingers, mummy dogs, monster mouths, candy corn colored fruit cups, and homemade root beer.

 Do you see Sammi's wig?  I made it.  I made it out of yellow yarn and one would think that would be pretty quick and easy.  Not so.  A Rapunzel-length wig takes approximately one thousand hours to make.  She was thrilled with it though, so it was all worth it.

ON TO THE NEXT ACTIVITY!

Daddy was home a bit the week of Halloween. He was working nights and was a good sport to do stuff with us during the day after a four hour-ish nap.  He spearheaded carving pumpkins which was fine by me!  We tried carving the tiny pumpkins we grew in our own garden, but some were a bit too small to do any kind of recognizable design.  I had an Ariel template printed out for Sammi, but there was no way to fit it on there, so I just freehanded a mermaid silhouette.  Those of you that know me know that I am NOT an artist, but I did at least make the tail recognizable, so a three-year-old girl ended up happy with her mermaid pumpkin.  (Again, I always think pumpkin carving sounds a lot more exciting than it ends up being...unless you are cool with letting your 3 and 5-year-old handle knives.  In that case, I bet your pumpkin carving experience is extremely exciting.  Also, fraught with danger.)

 We were so cuted out to be able to attend Emerson's school costume parade.  We set our chairs up lining the sidewalk and watched for him in his unique costume.  After about 50 other Iron Mans (Men?) passed by, we spotted our boy.  He's the one rocking the goatee.  It took some convincing that he should let Mom draw on his face with eyebrow pencil, but he was happy with the result at the end.  Also, does that awkward My Little Pony costume make anyone else happy?

 Finally, the big night!  We had our festive spooky dinner of chili, monster claw breadsticks, and witch's brew.  The kids were so excited to go trick-or-treating.

Maddi especially was thrilled.

We foolishly left our candy bowl unattended for 5 minutes and it was promptly dumped.  Greedy little teenagers.  Too bad for them that I laced my candy with hypodermic needles.  Ha! Joke's on them.  (But seriously, has anyone ever found candy that has been contaminated?  They always warn you to inspect your candy, but I feel like it's a myth.  But please share if you have!)

After feeling extremely bitter about our candy bowl, I remained at the house to distribute candy the rest of the night.  We actually had very few trick-or-treaters, and the ones that came by I didn't even know.  It was kind of lame.  Our kids didn't last very long, but still bragged about how much candy they got.  As long as they were happy, I was happy.  They even thought they were out past their bedtime!  They didn't know that I got them to bed at the regular hour because they were back so soon.  Cute little naive kids.  I love 'em to pieces.