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!