Happy Halloween

The kids picked their Halloween costumes with care - he is a knight and she is purple.

We buy costumes on November 1st so we have to try them on to see if they fit before we get too far.

Ready to trick or treat!

Halloween Events

There are many events the kids get to wear their costumes for throughout our area. I don't have pictures of them wearing them to school.

Here they are at his piano lesson - it was bring a friend and wear a costume.

I do not have a photo of where she took him to her voice class.

A fire station has an event where the kids can explore and go trick or treating. We were studying the local government and that day the kids had to research the fire chief. They were so excited to get to meet him in person that evening.

Pumpkin Carving

This is the second year the kids did the carving by themselves. I love this stage of independence!

Cleaning out the pumpkin

She went with an apron and a head band before diving her entire arm in

It's always more difficult than they remember

You can almost hear the grunts in the photo

Making the same face

Corn maze and pumpkin patch

The kids wanted to do a giant corn maze so this year we went to a different pumpkin patch than we normally do.

Inside the maze

We let the kids lead us - each got to lead for 3 turns then they switched. We still made it out faster than the average time. I wish it had lasted longer!

Pumpkins!

They had a pumpkin patch, but they were extremely expensive and after spending money to get there and for the maze we left without buying one.

Finished Pumpkins

We love Halloween, in case you didn't realize it. Here are the finished pumpkins all done by the kids.

Melted crayons, painted "doughnut"

Olaf! Get your head back on

That's better.

Wordless Wednesday

Melted Crayon Pumpkin

Painting Pumpkins

He knew exactly what he wanted to do and it required buying 3 pumpkins and multiple cans of spray paint. Yes, I'm the crazy mom who trusted my 7 year old with spray paint - he was closely supervised and outside in a well ventilated area.

First experience spray painting

This is going to take awhile.

Days later, still painting

Come back on Wednesday to see the finished result which is really cute.

Painting a pumpkin

Carved pumpkins don't last very long before rotting. However, whole painted pumpkins allow for creativity and a much longer display time. She picked a white pumpkin and got to work.

Painting the top pink

 Getting ready to add more colors

 Her finished pumpkin

(doughnut with pink icing and sprinkles)

Pumpkin Science

Better known as what happens when you don't throw out your pumpkins soon enough...

Halloween Costumes

Our annual tradition is to buy costumes on November 1st then a year later we are usually surprised by what the kids will be dressing up as, haha. May I introduce Pumpkin Head and Rose?

Wordless Wednesday

Carved Pumpkins

Here are the results of yesterday's carving post!

One scary (Sweet Son), one happy (Wonderful Husband), one cat (Sweet Daughter)

One skull (Sweet Son), one bat (both kids), one pirate (Sweet Daughter)

Carving Pumpkins

It's pumpkin carving time again. Every year the kids get a bit more independent in the process.

Cleaning out the inside

More cleaning out the inside

Learning to carve on a pattern

They took turns on this pattern

Come back tomorrow to see the finished results! (I'm such a tease, haha)

Decorating Cupcakes

Grandma gave us a scary cupcake decorating kit which was all of the encouragement we needed!

Adding the icing (notice the bit on her cheek, hehe)

Spiders!

He tried to look scary for the photo.

Pumpkin Patch

Another annual tradition we have is visiting the local pumpkin patch. I will miss it when the kids are too big to enjoy this.

Racing through the hay maze

Skipping through the hay maze

Required photo with props - they picked which area they wanted their picture in

Family selfie

Halloween Decorations

More houses in our neighborhood - this is a continuation from yesterday's post.

Simple

Impressive

There are 4 live people (including our kids) in this picture. This is always the scariest and sometimes the favorite house in the neighborhood.

Halloween Decorations

Our neighborhood goes all out of Halloween. I think we have the same number of houses decorated for Halloween as we do for Christmas. Here are just a few of the houses.

Pirate ships are always a favorite

 Ghosts and pumpkins

 This corner lot loves inflatables - they had more than 10 in the yard. Here you can only see 3-4.

After Halloween

What do you do with your pumpkins after Halloween? Some people plant them, some people throw them away. We had two choices - pumpkin chunkin or blowing them up. By the time we got to pumpkin chunkin which used trebuchets they had all broken. So we moved on to the explosives. Here is a quick video.

Halloween Costumes

Here are photos of our very festive Halloween costumes!

She is a witch, not a princess and was happy to point that out to everyone who made a mistake. 

His costume is a bit more obvious.

I wanted blue hair. No costume, I just wanted blue hair.

Here they are ready to go trick-or-treating.

Jack-o-lanterns

It's time to carve our annual jack-o-lantern! From the time they were babies they have been feeling the seeds and "slime" inside and now they aren't even squeamish about it.

Cleaning out the pumpkin

Here are some seeds

Helping with carving

Our pumpkin faces!