Halloween

We like to party! We like, we like to party! And Halloween is no exception! We celebrated Halloween 3 times in just a week. I don't remember Halloween being so much fun when I was a kid, but it sure is when I have kids!

The first party started the Monday before Halloween. Brynn and her buddy Miranda planned a Halloween party for their friends at Miranda's house. The kids had so much fun!

They did crafts,
played games,

took group photos,

went trick-or-treating, (Miranda's granparents live on their property and had someone to hand out treats at her grandparents house, the shed, barn, and man room)

and played pin the smile on the pumpkin!

Friday night after work we carved our pumpkins. Brynn was really in to it, but Cara wanted nothing to do with it at first. When she was asked to clean the goo out of her pumpkin she just kept repeating, "I not do it. You do it. I not gonna do it. No, you do it." I told her she could help carve unless she cleaned it out first. Of couse, once she got her hands in the goo she thought it was so cool and cleaned both her's and mine out.

She needed to be CLOSELY watched with the knife though. Holy smokes I am surprised my heart is still in my chest!

Insert the picture of Brynn carving here...I just deleted it :(

Our final products!

Saturday we had all our favorite people over to celebrate. The kids had so much fun! Here's the crew: Brynn, Claire, Nolan holding Emry, Ella holding Logan, Henry holding Charlie, Cara, Aubrey, Eli, and Evie.

We played a little pass the pumpkin. When the music stopped and you had the pumpkin you got to dig through the pumpkin's brain (cold spaghetti noodles) and find a prize.

We also did a little freeze dancing to the "Monster Mash!"

Here are the too cools while the rest of us dance. Nolan couldn't be any more like his dad, Aubrey on the other hand did end up joining us with a little coaxing.

For some reason I only took a picture of the spooky cake :( We did have quite the spread of spooky food though!

Finally, on Monday we celebrated one last time. Here is Little Bo Peep and her sheep!

Brynn's friend Miranda lives out in the country so she and her family came trick-or-treating with us.

We talk about healthy eating quite often at our house as I want the girls to always eat their fruits and vegetables and not eat too much junk. I bought small packages of pretzels to give out on Halloween. After the girls were done trick-or-treating they wanted to hand out our treats. Brynn found the back of a sticker sheet and wrote the word "healthy" on it and stuck it on our outside door so people would know we were handing out "healthy" snacks. She is such a nut!

All in all it was a very good Halloween 2011!

Picnic, really?

I cannot remember an October, November, or December like the ones were are experiencing this year. The girls (and Ollie) had a picnic on October 22 this year. Can you believe it? Although I have missed the snow this year, I have not missed the cold weather that comes with it!

Trundle!

Over MEA break we had planned a weekend trip with my sister and her family to Duluth. This was all Brynn talked about that week. Well, once Thursday came around Darren and I discussed how nice it would be to spend the weekend at home getting projects done. Then Friday came and we pushed out departure time until after naps. I called Kate to let her know we wouldn't be getting there until bed time-ish...the same time she was expected to arrive. Our conversation went from the arrival time to how about we don't go at all! Initially Brynn was really devastated until I told her Cara could have a sleepover in Brynn's room with the newly bought trundle. Sure enough that's all it took! We had two very happy campers! They did fabulous sleeping in the same room that night...however nights since have not been quite so successful and Cara has needed to go back into her room. She is a great rule follower in her own room (can't get out of bed until mom or dad come and get you) but Brynn's talking clock is just too tempting to stay in bed! There's nothing like hearing a man's voice saying ten fifteen P.M. when your kids should have long been alseep!

Farmington Tigers!

Darren loves himself a good marching band...and since we are his family we have embraced love for marching band as well. Early October was homecoming week for Farmington and since Darren is one of the marching band directors we had a very busy week! The day of the homecoming parade was beautiful. Notice the girls are in long sleeved shirts and shorts!

Lynn's son Cameron is a drummer in the band and invited the whole daycare to sit with them and watch the parade. Super fun!

Brynn and her very best buddy Miranda sporting their Tiger Wear!


Although we ate before going to the parade Cara scammed some of Jean's (Miranda's mom) sandwich. Little turkey!

Amanda had puffs for Evie and gained quite the crowd of little ones once they realized what Evie was eating.

The girls are enthralled with marching bands...I wonder if we'll have future marchers. I will say the band sure does have A LOT of fun out on the field!

The cheerleaders gave each of the kids pom poms to cheer on the football team.

Brynn and Cara even got to run across the street and watch the band up close with Darren while they passed us.

This year's home made Tiger shirts. I do get better and better at this if I do say so myself.

Since this was Darren's first year of being a marching band director we weren't really sure what to expect. He did warn me that our house could get toilet papered. Oh boy! However, the seniors held back with the toilet paper and instead put on quite the performance in our driveway at 11:15 at night. All our neighbors were roused from bed and out in their driveways enjoying the show. As my sister says, "Those crazy band kids!"

The girls sat very contently through each home game as long as they each had their own $1 popcorn. Sure girls, we can get popcorn tonight!

Notice we are out for an evening game on October 7th without coats. Gotta love this crazy Minnesota weather!

Apple Orchard :)

We made our annual trip to the apple orchard in early October. The weather was absolutely beautiful to be out picking apples. Unfortunately, it was extremely windy the week prior to our visit so we had to search far and wide to find apples on the tree. Once we found them the girls were efficient, almost too efficient, picking apples.

Our hay ride out to find the best apples. We found we all loved the sweet 16 apples. Grandma Debbie was up with Henry and Charlie the day before so she spent the morning at the orchard with us.

This is what the bottom of every tree looked like...no wonder we couldn't find many apples on the trees!

Cara thought she was pretty cool when we found apples at her height.

Every year we take pictures by this apple. Unfortunately, due to our computer crash last year we don't have "How tall this fall 2010?"

The highlight was definitely the train ride pulled by a tractor. Cara was very insistent that she ride it by herself. I though for sure once she was a few feet away from me she would change her mind. Nope, she threw a fit when her ride was over though!