Happy Halloween!

The last three days have been full of fun Halloween festivities. The best way to show all the fun things is to show lots of pictures!!
The fun started on Thursday afternoon when Brooklyn had dance class and performed her Halloween dance for everyone's parents. Her dance class is smack in the middle of the afternoon so she was very fortunate to have her daddy there.
All the girls dancing.
Posing for a class picture. I didn't try too hard to get a good picture since I was on the side of the room.
On Friday, Brooklyn dressed up again to go to preschool and have a Halloween party.
Friday night was our ward Halloween Carnival.
Marty, Eliza, and I were Chinese people and Brooklyn was our cat, Chester. We even taught her to wave like the Chinese cat you usually see all over Chinese places.
Eliza didn't really want to dress up until she saw that her mom and dad were also dressed up.
We had dinner, a carnival with fun games and activities, and a trunk or treat type thing around the church. Eliza enjoyed coloring the best.
Brooklyn liked it all, but we only got a picture of her fishing at the fish pond. It was a fun night!!
Saturday morning, Eliza and Brooklyn were invited to a friend's house for a little Halloween fun.
These are their bowls before we even went out trick or treating. Eliza's is the smaller one. We really didn't need to go out trick or treating, but wanted them to have the experience.
But first we had to carve our pumpkins. We usually do it the Monday before Halloween for FHE, but we were worried about them going bad so we did them on Saturday since we had a busy week.
Marty helped Brooklyn carve her cat pumpkin to match her cat costume.
Eliza was asleep while I carved a pumpkin for her (I know, very anti-climatic, but we didn't have time to wait for her to wake up). So we gave her a little tool and let her go at it for a bit. Luckily, she didn't ruin anything. She has a goblin pumpkin.
It was raining and cold when it came time to go out trick-or-treating. Fortunately, I remembered I had this awesome Chinese coat to add to Eliza's costume. Thanks to my Chinese friends in Taiwan who mailed me all of these things when Brooklyn was born.
Then off we went! Excuse Marty's reflective jacket. We only walked around the block and a few circles, but it took a good hour and a half. Eliza was a trooper and walked most of the way. She was just slow. We like to go out as a family so sadly we missed most of the kids that came around trick or treating. Now we have all this candy to eat.
Eliza started doing the candy sugar dance once we were home and before her bath.
Here is our finished pumpkins outside. Marty's is the mummy, mine is the ghost with Boo, Brooklyn's is the cat and Eliza's is the goblin. They turned out great!
Then today, since it's still a holiday but it's the Sabbath day, we let them wear their fancy Chinese dresses to church. They loved it and looked so cute!!

Feelin' the love

Just wanted to say thanks for the blog love. I'm feeling it! :)

The Witches!

One of our favorite Halloween traditions is to visit the Witches at Gardner Village! We have done this every year since Brooklyn was born. It's gotten harder to find a day to go with Brooklyn in preschool. Last Thursday, I was looking at the calendar trying to decide when to go. Then I watched the news and the weather convinced me if I was going to go to the Witches I had to go immediately. It's no fun in the cold.
We decided to take a trip as a family on Friday night. We got there around 5:30 pm and knew we had made a mistake. The place was packed! It was Witches Night Out! Everyone was decked out in their costumes, mainly witches, and here we were wearing our normal clothes. :) If I were driving, I would have turned around and gone home, but Marty was committed. We found a place to park and hiked into the village! It turned out to be a really fun night!! And the weather couldn't have been more perfect. The kids didn't need their jackets until the end. We did the best we could to just enjoy it as we normally would and it worked out really well. We took a ton of pictures and I loved a lot of them so I had to share!
Brooklyn has been giving us a fake smile lately for pictures. We figured out if we tell her to laugh, she will let out a giggle and then we get to see her genuine smile.
Walking around.
There were several new witches this year. Brooklyn loved this firefighter one with water that blew over the bridge.
Pretty cool!
I love all the wagons.
This witch was like the Princess and the Frog, which Brooklyn loves. Eliza was a little unsure.
No fear though, she went right over and sat down (hesitantly!) I think all the witches walking around were what really made her nervous.
This is my favorite witch because it's the same one every year and we always get a picture sitting by her. I had to sit with the girls to show them it was safe.
Then Eliza was fine to sit by herself.
Well, if Eliza can do it then Brooklyn had to as well. Wow! Brooklyn hasn't sat by this witch alone for the last two year.
Daddy and his girls.
Marty wanted to play in the leaves. Do you see his mischievous look?
Watch out!
They all got into it and really enjoyed themselves. I enjoyed taking the pictures.
Eliza trying to get all the leaves off her.
The bike witch is another favorite.
They were selling these hats, but we just posed for a picture.
That's it!
The girls had a fabulous time!!!
Haha, as were were walking back to our car, Brooklyn decided she needed to take a picture of Marty and I. She sat us down and this is what we got.
And this...
Ah, finally! It's actually a really good picture. I had to laugh though. It was another fun fall family night!

Failing

I must be failing. For the entire month of October, I've had no more than 3 comments on a post. I don't normally get a ton, but that makes me feel like I'm somehow failing. I love comments and I'm not quite sure why. Sure, my life is pretty boring right now. No exciting events like baby announcements (like most people I know) . But at this rate, I think I'm going to shut this blog down to only myself because then I won't worry about the blog validation that apparently I need. Then it will just be the journal I want it to be and it won't matter what anyone says. Hmmm, or maybe it's just one of those days.....

Painting Pumpkins

The day after the pumpkin patch, Brooklyn wanted to paint her pumpkin first thing in the morning. I made her wait until we went to the library in hopes she would forget about painting. No luck. She had it all planned out. She HAD to paint that pumpkin! I would have rather waited until Eliza was down for a nap, but Brooklyn wanted her to paint one as well.
I decided to only let them paint the mini pumpkins.
All covered up in hopes of no messes. I wasn't so lucky. Eliza was a disaster and had paint everywhere. I became mean mom and stressed over all the paint. It soon turned into a not so fun activity.
They both had fun though because they didn't see any mess.
Brooklyn wanted her pumpkin purple.
Eliza chose brown.
After they dried, we tried to think of something fun to turn the pumpkins into. I picked a spider for Eliza's, even though she picked the green and pink eyes. Then I wouldn't even let her hold it again because she kept ripping the legs off.
Brooklyn made her pumpkin a purple pumpkin sitting on a haystack. She wanted to have a face though since Eliza's did.
Craft projects always remind me I need to relax a little and deal with the disaster. I'm still not very good at it yet. The girls were pretty proud of their work though!

Let's pick us some Pumpkins!

On Monday night, we went with our friends, the Lundy's and the Fairbank's, to a pumpkin patch behind The District in South Jordan. I have no idea the name of the place, but it has a lot of other extra activities and the pumpkin prices are amazing. We went here last year and really enjoyed it so we all decided to go together again for FHE. The girls were super excited!
Brooklyn: Hmmm, which one should we pick?
Over there!
I like this one! Mom & Dad: Let's keep looking. That one is a little green. :)
Eliza was a little confused of what we were doing and enjoyed watching the tractor that kept driving by.
Eliza thought the wheelbarrow was awesome!
Brooklyn: Come on Liza, help me with this one.
They were all a bit heavy for Eliza. She kept dropping the pumpkin when we tried to get a picture by herself.
Brooklyn picked a big, heavy pumpkin to get her picture taken with and had to have a little help from dad.
Mom and the girls.
Dad and the girls.
The whole family of pumpkins!
We got the three we wanted. 3 good sized pumpkins and two tiny pumpkins: $6.
This pumpkin wagon was adorable so we had to take a picture of all the little ones. Brooklyn, Meredith, Will and Eliza.
Then we enjoyed the extra free activities. We went on the tractor wagon ride around the property. Then had fun in the kid's corn maze, which by the way had only one trail and it led out of the maze so it was great for kids. :)
Where are you Brooklyn?
Then the kids wanted to take some pictures with the tractors. Eliza wanted to sit on all of them, but she didn't get that opportunity.
Brooklyn wanted a picture with Will on a tractor. She was a little obsessed with Will and his family tonight, just ask the Fairbanks. :)
Then mom and Eliza took one last picture in the hay wagon. We had a fun, enjoyable night with family and friends!