Annual Pumpkin Carving Party...

The Food:

Navajo Tacos for dinner

 

Apple Pie Caramel Apples

 

 

 Witches' Wands

 Spider Eggs

Severed Fingers

 Skull Candy

 Mice :)

Pumpkin Juice with Floating Skulls

 The Family:

 

The Jack-o-lanterns:

Andrea's Haunted House

Paul's Ghost

Caleb's warty toad

Blaze's Curious George

Luke's inside out pumpkin

Andrew's carving of Cara

The Games:

 Blaze was loving eating his pie without hands, until his daddy shoved his face into it!

 The fastest pie eater (pig) this year!

 

Thanks to Fred and Jill for all of the fun party supplies!

 

Fall Festivities...

 While Jackson was at a b-day party, we took the other kids to see the witches at Garnder Village. They have a scavenger hunt to find witches doing funny activities, and if you complete it, you get a cookie from the bakery.

 This is the kids' favorite, every year! "Witchy Poo"! The clue is to find a witch reading her morning paper!

I LOVE just about anything pumpkin, and we've had everything from pancakes, to smoothies, bread, soup, oatmeal, etc. etc made from pumpkin! Alanna doesn't like syrup, she opts for Mickey Mouse pancakes with chocolate chips to decorate with :)

We went to our local pumpkin patch to let let the kids pick their own pumpkins this year. I usually just buy them at Walmart, thinking they are cheaper, but we were surprised how inexpensive the pumpkin patch was! And they had so many unusual pumpkins. Paul is obsessed with ghosts for some reason. He has already been a ghost for Halloween twice, and he insists on being a ghost this year! He also wanted to get a white pumpkin to make a ghost out of. There were plenty of white pumpkins in the patch, but he kept rejecting one after another. I finally asked him what he wanted exactly, and he said he wanted one that wasn't dirty! James and I got a good laugh from that! I told him he could just wash it off, and he was okay with that, finally!

Alanna Lately...

Alanna was invited to the fanciest tea party that I have ever seen, and it was for a 4 year old birthday party! It was decorated like a garden wedding reception. I should have taken pictures of everything at the beginning of the party, but I figured my friend would take plenty. She hasn't put them out on Facebook yet though! Anyhow, Alanna chose to wear her witch costume to this very fancy party. They had crepes, cake balls, finger sandwiches, cake, ice cream and more, all served on fine china. The week after, Alanna was invited to a princess party where she was supposed to wear a princess dress. She chose the witch costume again! Finally, a friend had a Halloween party, and it was very appropriate to wear her witch costume. I guess it's a good thing we bought it early this year. Alanna also got her hair trimmed and styled at Cookie Cutters. The stylist called this do a princess braid, and it's been awesome because she wants it like this everyday now! Fixing her hair for the past week has been a breeze compared to normal!

Blaze's Birthday Celebration!!!

Coming home from a week of vacation and jumping into party preparations is a little exhausting! Blaze loves monkeys though, so I had to make this special cake for him.

 Grandma Ce-Ce and Poppy were there to help celebrate. They always bring something for all of the kids, this time it was some light up yo-yos.

 They also gave Blaze a Cookie Monster stuffed animal (he's quite attached to him), an Elmo shirt (he wants to wear that everyday!), and a Sesame Street Drum set. I got several short videos of him playing the drums - he's a natural :)

We got Blaze this "Car's" trike. He is figuring out how to pedal it on his own!

Here are cards he received from his Great Gran Perkins, and his Williamson Grandparents!

Road Trip Back to Reality...

It was Blaze's 2nd birthday on the day we travelled home from San Diego. I couldn't feel too bad that spent most of the day in the car after the week we all had! We had huge muffins for his special breakfast, and he seemed to enjoy that. He is still in love with his Cookie Monster shirt that James made him for his 1st birthday!

It was so good to see my high school friends, Sam and Melinda Farley. They live in Corona, CA, and we stopped at their home to visit for a couple of hours on our way back. We reminisced about high school dances and pranks, and caught up on news about old friends. It reminded me of  how lucky I was growing up with a group of stellar friends who shared the same standards and have a firm testimony of the gospel. We were also so blessed to have amazing youth leaders and seminary teachers! Since Paul died, I don't have anyone close to me to reminisced about growing up, so this was a much needed experience for me. I love that even though I haven't seen them for 10 years, we didn't have an awkwardness - it's just like we've been friends for 25 years. Because we have been :)

 

We stayed at a hotel in St. George that night to break up the trip. The next morning we swam, and then hit the outlets. The boys have been begging to go there because according to them, the Children's Place outlet is the ONLY place to get sunglasses and flip flops! Alanna found the "perfect" Halloween costume for herself, and of course, her daddy bought it for her!