Happy Halloween!

Our 2009 Pumpkin

Last night while the kids enjoyed root beer floats in retro goblets from Goodwill, I carved our pumpkin. Caleb got to chose the eyes and Lorelei got to chose the mouth. And yes, our pumpkin is in fact a very realistic replica of a pirate with an eye patch. Good times and even better memories were made.



And for the first time last night, I attempted to cook up our pumpkin seeds. Mine didn't turn out very flavorful, but I also didn't follow the recipe very well. Here is the very simple recipe I used if anyone is interested.

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

Where is time going???

Wow, almost another month has passed us by!

Since I last posted Caleb has had his first official scouts meeting and he seems to really enjoy that. I think we have to get him a uniform before the first meeting in November, but I'm letting Dad take care of that stuff with him.

We are almost finished with our 2009 cheer season and I won't say I'm disappointed by that at all. It's been a crazy season and most of the time I feel like we have no idea what's going on at all. I'm just crossing my fingers that by some miracle the girls do well enough to feel good about themselves at their gala.

School picture day was today. We made the decision to forgo ordering school portraits and instead I'm going to take the kids in somewhere simple like Walmart for a session. It's cheaper and you get more pictures to give out to family and friends. We are however going to get them both yearbooks, because I'd like them to have those memories down the road. I was mad at myself for not getting them one last year!





The kids are really excited about Halloween. After being on vacation and then sick for the last few weeks, I finally asked them about costumes today. Caleb intends to be Optimus Prime while Lorelei is intending to reuse her kitten costume (if I can find it) from last year. We're supposed to attend a Halloween Party in two days (if everyone is feeling well enough) so I've got to get on costume search ASAP.

Lots of big life changes going on around here; all of them very positive and wonderful. :)

Trick-or-Treat, Smell My Feet...

So you probably can't tell from the picture, but our neighborhood has hundreds of people during trick-or-treat hours! All those specs of color on the other end of the street are people.

Lorelei and Caleb passing out candy.

Our little pink kitten.

Our all-powerful jungle fury power ranger.

And it's not even over yet! If George and I were feeling 100% we'd probably be at the community parade/get-together that starts in about 5 minutes at one of our little parks and pavillions.

Trick-or-treat started at 4, but we opted to wait until closer to 5 before we headed out so that people would have some more time to get home from work and get that candy ready for passing out. The kids handed out candy to the first stream of costumed cuties who came our way.

We left candy on our porch for trick-or-treaters and if you can believe it someone who stopped by our house while we were gone for our 1st half hour of trick-or-treating stole all our candy, including the container it was in. I'm definitely NOT doing that again. I was seriously disappointed.

We then went out for another half hour or so and hit a few more rows of houses before Caleb was ready to call it quits. Lorelei and I hit about 10 more houses after Daddy took him home and by then the sun was going down and it was starting to cool off enough that jackets were becoming necessary.

We made quite a hall this year! We filled up two Easter buckets (bad Mommy had no Halloween buckets/bags to use!) full of delectable morsels.

Pumpkin Time

******************PRESENTING****************
Pumpkins 2008

We finally "carved" all of our pumpkins last night!

I bought Mr. & Mrs. Potatohead pumpkin kits at Target for the kids. Caleb got the vampire kit and Lorelei got the Pretty Princess kit. The packaging indicated ages 2+ so I assumed it was something the kids would do on their own while I snapped photos, but that wasn't exactly how it worked.

All of the individual pieces are designed like they could be used for a traditional Mr. Potatohead, but that doesn't really work so well for actually sticking them into the side of a pumpkin, so with a very sharp knife I had to make holes for each piece to be slid into.

Regardless, Caleb and Lorelei seriously enjoyed the activity and it gave daddy some time to get the biggest pumpkin cleaned out for carving purposes.


The kids decided that our pumpkin should have a half-friendly smiley face and a half-scary toothy face. And George and I attempted to oblige them.

Yes, we realize that we are definitely not in the caliber of those who could be called professional pumpkin carvers, but...I mean hey, we tried!