Well, since it's nearly Christmas, as I am not-so-gently reminded every four minutes by my very excited children, I thought I'd better make some sort of attempt at catching up here.
This year I really wanted to take the kids to this awesome pumpkin patch that is by our old house. Never happened. Instead, Huz and BoyOne ran to our local small town market one night right before they closed and bought 6 pumpkins. The next day Huz told each of the kids which pumpkin was theirs. They were disappointed to not have picked them out, but we started carving right away and their disappointment was quickly forgotten.
Four
Three
BoyTwo
Two
One
BoyOne
Huz
BoyOne was truly disgusted at the thought of cleaning out his pumpkin and was trying to get a sibling to do this for him, which I nixed. He's got to learn, especially if he is a dad someday. What's he going to say to his spouse, 'Wife, come help the kids with their pumpkins, I'm scary (he still says scary instead of scared. it's cute)'? Anyhow, it ended up not being so terrible.
One
Four had no problem scraping out the insides with her bare fingers
BoyTwo. All I said was 'BoyTwo, smile!' I had wanted was a picture of him holding up the guts and instead he pretends to kiss them?! Silly boy
Hard at work
Ope! Those neck muscles still aren't quite strong enough to hold up that head of his. See how his chin is resting on his chest? It's getting better but is still sooooo hard for him.
Four
I carved this one.
Three wanted her pumpkin to look like her. Remember her top front teeth had just been knocked out? And her bottom ones were only starting to grow in. I carved this one, too.
BoyTwo wanted an 'angry' pumpkin. This was our compromise. It's 'scary'. I try to redirect him from anger... lol
and this one
Two
and this one
One
Huz carved this one. Curves are much more time consuming than straight lines.
He's trying not to smile but is also very disappointed and mad. His pumpkin didn't turn out the way he wanted, even though he designed it. I think he was expecting a high quality sculpture instead of a we-used-our-crappy-steak-knives-and-did-the-best-we-could-with-your-drawing. We wanted to have him carve his own but he was too intimidated by it and because I had already made him gut his own pumpkin, I decided it could wait until next year. Huz did it for him and was VERY patient with his excessive complaining and grumpy attitude. I would've been far less so. Lucky BoyOne.
I kept trying to light them all, but then one or more would blow out, so I finally just took the picture.
The left side of the stairs.
The right side of the stairs
BoyTwo with his 'friend' who is actually the brother of Two's BFF. He is really good with BoyTwo and will come play with him every couple of weeks
Four and her BFF (our little neighbor boy)
Three with her BFF
(also our neighbor)
Two and her BFF
My kids are really short. Which doesn't make a ton of sense. Huz is 6'5". I'm 5'4". I know I'm not tall, but really, I'm not that short either. And Huz is quite tall. So, what happened to the kids??? They are all the shortest, or one of the shortest, in their classes. Each within the 10-20 percentile for their age.
One
This is the first year that she didn't come out with the fam. It was kind of sad! She went with friends and had a great time, so it was good.
This is the kids dressed up before the church Halloween party that Three's tooth was knocked out at. Obviously, One is in a different costume than what she ended up wearing the night of trick-or-treating. She had such a difficult time deciding. I wish she'd put as much thought into a future career...
The crew heading out. They made out like bandits. It was great. I stayed home to pass out candy. I had 15 trick-or-treaters. Six of them were my own children. Sad! We come from a neighborhood and area that is heavily populated with children (think 200 trick-or-treaters), so this was a bit of a disappointment. BUT I had a lot of quiet:) Our first two Halloween's up here, we went back to our old neighborhood so this was our first time here and we didn't know what to expect.
I didn't get a pic of BoyOne. He dressed up in our neighbors lacrosse uniform. He was embarrassed to be going out. He desperately wanted to, but when he found out that none of his school aged friends were going out (he's in 9th grade), he thought that he shouldn't go out either. He thought he was too old. It was so sad. We ended up being able to talk him into still going. Good grief, this is only his 3rd time trick-or-treating in his LIFE. We try to get him as many of those missed-out-on moments as we can.
