Trick or Treat!!!

Orchard visit with friends

Early this month we scheduled a trip to an apple orchard in Pennsylvania with friends whose kids are the same ages as ours. This is the same orchard we took Grandma and Grandpa to the first year we lived in Delaware.

This orchard has a ton of kid-friendly activities and things to do, plus animals galore! Of course we had to start off with the farmer cutouts! Here's R as a farmer's wife with one of our friends as the farmer.

RUS has always been totally in love with D-- we used to laugh because often we would pass one another outside walking in/out of day care and RUS would literally lunge out of my arms and into hers. She says she's used to carrying both of her kids and RUS is a lot lighter than her daughter (who is R's age) so she didn't mind this at all.

The play area was a HUGE hit for both of the kids. Here's RUS crawling through a train

and finally arriving out the front. He was so tickled!

And this castle was wild. You had to climb a ladder to get to the second story (a ladder that I didn't climb because of the number of kids also trying to climb, so R had to do it by herself.) She was brave!

Here's a closer pic. She LOVED being at the top of the castle and really wanted me to climb up, but there was no way I was going to fight a sea of under-8-year-olds to try and get up there.

Then we went to where the pumpkins are and tried to get pictures of all the kids--we're only missing one in this picture!

One of the coolest parts of this orchard is that each year they have different pumpkin displays. This one was R's favorite (of course): Pumpkin Cinderella and her pumpkin coach!

And me and the two girls decided to be witches!

While wandering around the gift shop we saw this display of hay bales and tried to get a big group shot. The kids were not real into it! This is the best shot we got.

But R and her friend still wanted to pose so we accommodated them.

Before we left, we got the kids some apple cider for the ride home and R and I shared a caramel apple. YUM. Oh man. I remember as a kid my mom buying the caramel sheets for making caramel apples with. Me and my brothers LOVED those. 

As a side note, for this orchard, there's no entrance fee, but each thing you do (horse ride, face painting, play area, etc.) costs a small amount of money, which adds up. J and I tried to do the mental calculations and figure out whether we'd rather pay a flat fee for everyone to get in and then everything you do is free, or whether we'd rather pay per activity. It kind of worked out about the same for us cost-wise but I think having to pay for everything is a little bit of a pain (pulling out your wallet again and again, etc.)

The Angel Witch

This is the inspiration for R's Halloween costume this year. She wanted to be an "angel" but I didn't really know what she meant by "angel" so I got paper and crayons and asked her to describe for me what the angel should look like.

She said the angel should have a brown skirt with a black shirt, a rainbow nose, red wings with yellow on the outside, and one stripey leg and one polka dot leg.

So. J and I kept our eyes open for elements we could use. We had a lot of them already. She has a brown skirt. She needed a black shirt. We have stripey tights and polkadotted babylegs. We weren't too sure about the rainbow nose or the wings, but we figured we'd figure something out.

Then R and I were at the drugstore just looking around and she spotted a witch's hat in the Halloween aisle that she fell in love with. We happen to have a witch's hat at home but the one in the store had a flower on it. So we made a felt flower and attached it to our witch's hat with a hot glue gun. After that, she started saying she was going to be an "angel witch."

I found a witchy skirt on super-clearance and some butterfly wings that are actually orange and yellow but they made R happy so that was what mattered.

And we'll do the full costume reveal at the neighborhood Halloween parade tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Pumpkin Carving!

RUS and I carved our pumpkin while R was at gymnastics today. Here we are getting started. RUS put on his game face, aka "smile, RUS!" and we got started.

I drew a couple of different faces on paper and let RUS pick the one he liked best. We went with a simple triangle-inspired face: triangle eyes, triangle nose, triangle teeth. Here's how it looked after we got the eyes cut out.

And here's the pumpkin, completely carved. RUS helped by holding crayons and occasionally touching the pumpkin with the crayons. 

After lunch, R and J and I worked on her pumpkin while RUS napped. Here we are pulling out the seeds. J actually did the carving this time.

R was very particular about how she wanted her pumpkin to look. She drew a couple different versions on paper, and J and I worked to transform her inspiration into something carveable. She had full veto power over our drawings and in fact was quite picky. She wanted a biiiiiiiiiiiig mouth and big eyes and a triangle nose "pointing up!" So, that's what we did!

Clearly a princess pumpkin, isn't it??

Apple Cider Donuts at the Pumpkin Patch

Dress-Up Fun in the Target Aisles

In my continued efforts to have fun and get in the spirit of things without actually spending money (although going to Target usually = spending money, so I don't know that this is a perfect solution) here are the kids having fun trying on masks from the $1 bins at Target.

Pumpkin:

Kitty Cat:

Pumpkin + Magician's Hat:

Mouse:

Frankenstein (to be fair, this one is actually meant to be worn like a visor which, yes, is really quite silly but for picture-taking purposes it works quite as well to just hold it over your face as R is doing below):

Monkey:

Creepy Skull:

 Elephant:

(Some of) This Year's Halloween Cards

As we do each year, the kids made Halloween cards for their cousins, pen-pals, and grandparents. We did these in batches, so not everyone got the same kinds of cards. Here's the cousin cards and one of the pen pals. The kids decorated Jack-o-Lantern faces, some looked relatively Jack-o-Lanterny, and some looked, well, Picasso-esque.

J and I were very impressed with R's ghost decorating, too.

Here's Elvis Ghost:

And here's Wild West Ghost:

And here's Joe Cool Ghost:

And of course RUS got in on the action too, as he decorated the backs of the cards with his own set of pumpkin stickers and markers. I helped him write his name and pick out alphabet letters. 

Less than a Week until Halloween!!!

Here's a wonderfully fallish post to kick off our "leading up to Halloween" week of special blog posts! R is wearing the softest, most gorgeous sweater knitted by one of my favorite people in the whole world, Princess M.

The sweater is perfect for the crisp weather we're having now, and R loved it so much she was inspired to do a dance that she insisted I capture on video for you all.

It was meant to be, right?

Today J was going to be gone until well into the evening, so I was on my own for day care pickup, dinner, bath, and bedtime. I had no genius plan for dinner other than spaghetti (remember, I am not much of a cook, at all), but then on the way to day care I thought to myself, "Maybe I should take the kids to McDonald's." And then I was like, "No, it's so unhealthy. We don't need to go anywhere. We have food at home."

Anyway when I picked up RUS there were two coupons for a free McDonald's ice cream cone attached to his daily report sheet. One labeled "RUS" and one labeled "R."

It was fate, right? I was supposed to take the kids to McDonald's, right? I hope so, because that's what I did.

Introducing L!

Our newest nephew is the cutest thing I have ever seen. I am absolutely dying to meet him--I'm sure my mother is, too!! Fortunately my parents are headed out there in a couple weeks on a trip to Hawaii with a pit stop in San Diego, but I'm going to have to wait awhile to snuggle this little cutie.

Fall Foliage Walk

We took the kids on a hike yesterday to see more leaves changing color. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to get good pictures of foliage when it's far away (many of the trees were really high) and we spent more time looking at leaves on the ground or, when there were gusts of wind, watching them drift lazily down from the trees. But I did snag a few good pictures of J and the kids.