Halloween!!!!

Yay!! Halloween!!! :)

It was a great day...the weather was pretty nice so the kids were not cold while they were trick-or-treating throughout the neighborhood.

Claire wasn't so sure about this guy, but she had a ton of fun going door to door.
She even got the hang of saying "trick-or-treat", which was so adorable! Little did she know that all her hard work would go to her parents! Like stealing candy from a baby. So sad.
Well, at least she can eat a couple of lollipops :)

There were some cool houses this year! This one house had a giant inflatable headless horseman.

Josh lit up the night!!! Parents and kids passing by made lots of comments on Josh's costume. He told me at one point that he "felt frustrated" because they kept stopping him to look at his costume. Pretty funny.Claire knew just what to do!

After trick-or-treating we went to this neighborhood near our house where
there is a magician - the Great Bobini - who puts on a magic act every halloween in his front yard. He decks the whole place out like a giant haunted castle that you can actually go through, and has a stage and seating set up in his driveway for the show. It was amazing!

Joshua's little preschool friend Meredith lives down the street from the Great Bobini,
so we went to the show with her family.

This is Meredith.
I think Josh may be in love with her :)

They are so cute together....best friends.
Joshua is such a Mack daddy around her! His teachers even told me that he is very protective of her and will stand up to other kids if they are being mean to her at school. One day at preschool I heard him say what I think may be his first pickup line! He sat down on the rug beside Meredith and put his arm around her, then he very softly and gently started running his fingers through her hair and said "Your hair is SMOOTH and COLD.

Wanna feel mine?"

ha ha ha

I guess she's in love too, because her parents told me they were having dinner one day when Meredith said "I'm going to marry Joshua.", then her little sister spoke up and said
"Ya, and I'm going to marry Claire!"

Oh ya I also need to tell you about Josh's preschool halloween party! They got to go trick-or-treating at the mansion..... all the researchers told me that this is the highlight of their year!

They hiked down the path to the mansion...

and knocked on the door.

Then they got to explore the mansion and trick-or-treat in every room.
That was really cool for all the moms! Check out some of the pictures I got of the house while the kids were trick-or-treating!

Danger Will Robinson!!

For months Josh has been saying he wanted to be a pirate for halloween, so that is what we were planning on, that is until we were at Target trying on the pirate hat....he refused to put it on and suddenly announced to me that he was not going to be a pirate for halloween. He was in fact going to be a robot! Hmm....so, with Halloween only a couple of days away, I had to get creative! Well, the cardboard box hasn't failed me yet, so that is exactly what I used to make Josh's robot costume. It was cheap (less than $20 for all the materials), and actually didn't take that long to make. About 4 hours.... 1 and 1/2 of that Josh was awake and "helping".

Since we also had this cute NASA astronaut suit for Claire to wear, we decided to make it a space family theme for our ward halloween party.

Jason is the Universe....seemed appropriate for a doctor of space science :)
The "orbital rings" are made of white yarn, and the planets are made out of felt. I safety pinned it all on so he could just take it off of his shirt after halloween.

So here is our family pic!

Josh ended up being a space robot with rockets on his back, Claire was the astronaut, Jason was the Universe, and I was the stars, or a galaxy. Take your pick. Just cardboard stars hanging from wire attached to a hairband.....quick, and easy!

We even won a prize at our ward halloween party for "most original family costume".

Family Halloween Fun Day

Wow, I have a lot of catching up to do!! We've been busy, and everyone in my house has been sick for 2 weeks. Claire has had it the worst with a double ear infection, and her cold actually moved up into her eyes, so they were practically swollen shut for a few days, and we all have sinus colds and coughs. No fun. But, it's a beautiful warm (for november) day, and things are looking up! I'm going to try to get as much blogging done as I can while my kids are napping!

Sooo.....lets start with our family Halloween fun day! Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I look foreward to our family halloween day all year. This has become a tradition in our family: the last Saturday before Halloween we have a family day where we go to Hell....(yes, H-E-double hockeysticks), Michigan and get icecream at "Screams Icecream", and pick out a halloween decoration from their year-round Halloween store.
Umm no, this is not the decoration we brought home.

The icecream is really yummy, and they have a sundae bar where you can load up your sundae with different toppings such as gummy worms and m&m's, and other toppings named funny things like "shrek dust" (green sprinkles), "bat droppings" (chocolate chips), "blue ooze" (blue marshmallow cream), "dracula's blood" (strawberry-chocolate sauce), etc. This year we were sitting out at a picnic table eating our concoctions, when a man came up to us and asked if he could take some pictures of our family for the county visitor guide, so he did and made us sign a release. We took some pics of our own... I think this first one would have been perfect for the visitor guide!

Jason and Claire outside of Screams Icecream

Next we went to a cornmaze and a petting farm. Claire kept oinking because she wanted to go back to see the pigs over and over again! I chased Josh around the hay bales, and then we went into the corn maze.

Josh is saying "Arrrrr"....he said that was a pirate skeleton.
The corn maze was actually one of the better ones we've been in in a long time...we wandered around for quite awhile. Josh started wondering if we were ever going to get out, and he was not amused when Jason suggested we may have to sleep in the maze and eat the dried up corn for dinner.
Yikes! Why didn't anyone tell me there was a giant spider behind me?
I hate spiders!
Eventually we did find our way out and headed out to the pumpkin patch!

It's just this little family pumpkin patch, I don't think many people know about it. You pick out a wagon and pull it out to this little pumpkin patch on a private farm. They always have the trail decorated for halloween, and you go and pick out your own pumpkins and then haul them back to the house to pay. The kids had a blast in the wagon while Daddy pulled them out to the patch, then they each picked out a pumpkin.

I love this picture of Claire :)

She was asleep in the exact same wagon in this picture...only 1 month old.
Recognize the pumpkin hat from last year?
It fits a little better now.

Kittens!!
We had a fun day!