Halloween-ery

October is always a busy, fun time of year. Somehow, despite our best efforts, we always end up doing maybe too much. There are the carnivals at school...

and at church...

We returned to Boo at the Zoo this year (much better than my memories of it a couple of years ago). Owen mastered his stormtrooper shooting pose. Batman and Darth were friends who helped protect Princess Hadley. (By the way, I love that she was just a princess and didn't have to be a specific Disney princess!!)

The animals were definitely secondary (or tertiary?) to the candy and games/crafts. Hadley was very into the crafts; Owen was antsy to move on to his "troop", which he could see from the crafting area!

All in all, a good outing for the two! I have to mention that Owen lamented that his stormtrooper detailing ended at the waist. I must agree! Hadley's costume came out of our existing dress-up bin. Maybe next year's costumes will be more of an investment... 

And Owen's school had a 1st grade Halloween program. He's the blondie in the middle. They sang about 10 songs, and each class did their own poem, complete with original artwork. Who knew there were that many Halloween songs?

Not to be outdone, Hadley learned this poem at school and recited it on repeat quite a bit. I first heard it at the library 5 years ago, but now it's everywhere. Enjoy!

Then there was the decorating! There was always something more to add. I added the spider web and hanging ghoul one day while Owen was at school. He was so excited to see it when he got home that he jumped right off of his bike to admire it.

Hadley and I also had fun decorating the driveway while we were waiting for Owen to come home. Unfortunately, it rained black cats and werewolves about 30 minutes later, but it was fun to create anyway! Sometimes it's fun to embrace your inner child.

We did these ghost lanterns last year and enjoyed them enough to do them again. Stuff them with a strand of lights and you have an adorable, spooky porch light. (This is how much milk we drank in October!)

The kids were even gung-ho about scooping out their own pumpkin goop. Owen probably did about 85% of his, while Hadley did about 25% of hers. Scary faces were requested, of course, carved by adults, and quickly added to the porch.

Finally, it was time for trick-or-treating. We met a group of friends a few houses away, chowed down on a pre-walk feast, and scoured the neighborhood for treats! At least it was a school night, so we had to end at a reasonable time, although Owen still filled his bucket completely. Hadley and I turned in 45 minutes earlier when she got too cold to continue. Whew! Another holiday celebrated in style - check!

Corn Maze Education

The warmth is slowly slipping away, so we just had to enjoy an unseasonable warm, sunny day at a local farmer's corn maze! They had several silly gags and some kids' entertainment set up in addition to the maze. 

The kids loved this arrangement of old tractor tires. Climbing up, over, under, and through or leaping from one to the next, they could have played on here for an hour, if we let them.

But we had to get down to the actual business of the maze. This one was a bit different than our usual location. Not an elaborate, large-scale, themed design. It was apparently formed and maintained by the farmer's wife, and it had questions. (71 of them, in fact!) Each question had two possible answers: one was correct and pointed you onward, the other led to a dead end, which wasn't visible from the question point. Some were easy and some were not. (Did you know that China consumes more wheat than rice?) We mostly followed our fearless reader, and it took us about 1.5 hours to do a 1.5 mile maze. It was a perfect way to spend the day!

Pumpkins, Stormtroopers, and Leaves. Oh My!

I've been soaking up these guys as much as possible lately. Aren't they cute? Both are loving school and learning so much! Owen can read most of his books by himself now and gets 'List 2' (more difficult) spelling words each week. Hadley is making friends, thriving in music, and I think is nearly ready to read.

I wish he would show you his teeth. The top incisors are coming in and they are HUGE! Don't know where he gets that from...  Haha!

In other news, Owen finally wrapped up his football season; they've been practicing weekly since the first of August. They ended with a couple of weeknight games though, which were cold and ran later than his bed time, so it was a good time to end it. This is the best team picture I got because they didn't do formal ones. I believe their record was 5-3; a great team of sweet, goofy boys. Owen enjoyed learning about the game and even scored a few touchdowns, which was so fun to witness!

The weather has been all over the place, but we have had a few days of sunshine to enjoy the leaves before they were all blown away. We even took a family bike trip to crunch through them! I hung back with my biking unicorn buddy.

It was so nice that day that we also made a trip to the pumpkin patch. Sunday afternoon meant that we had the place pretty much to ourselves...

Our bounty of pumpkins! The little green one was all our garden would produce. The painted orange one (Owen's) and vampire green one (Hadley's) were craft projects. Owen comes up with new ideas and requests to make more decorations for Halloween almost daily. They love this time of year!

We were brainstorming all kinds of races for the kids to do down the sidewalk: skipping, running, jumping, one-footed hopping, galloping...

Finally, one busy Saturday included a morning football game for O, birthday party for O while H went to a free ice skating lesson (she did well, but said she didn't like it),

and a Star Wars day at the bookstore! They are a little obsessed, and Owen will be a Stormtrooper for Halloween, so they had a blast! He was the first to call out the answers to the reader's questions: "Millenium Falcon!", "Death Star!", etc. And they even got to take some SW swag home. Best. Day. Ever.

So Long September!

Welcome to a random hodge podge of the rest of September. 

I call this one "Hadley was building." I think she was pretending that the book was her blueprints for her house. I can't explain the Rubik's cube though. Suffice it to say that she is pretty good at imaginative play and entertaining herself...

Like this card game she was playing with the trucks. Lol! She misses Owen when he's at school and she's not. 

Lots of imagination in use when he's home too, just a lot more guns.

We went bowling with our library rewards. I may have taught Hadley how to granny-bowl (for safety's sake)! I think these were the slowest rolling bowling balls I have ever seen.

The weather was pretty strange this September. It's usually my favorite month up here, but it was cold/hot/cold/hot/rain. At least we like the rain!

The early chills have changed some colors around town.

And about the only thing producing in my garden this late summer is raspberries. They are taking over! I can get a bowl like this every other day during the peak weeks. We are also getting just enough tomatoes to get by.

Lastly, we made it to the state fair with some friends for an afternoon. I think we go every couple of years, and the kids always enjoy it! This was the first year my kids realized there was a whole section with rides! Rats! Secret's out.

But they still enjoyed the free areas, too. Especially the tractors and animals, like the ginormous turkey. It's a lot harder to enjoy the fair now that we are constrained by school hours, but it was a perfect afternoon to check it out.