Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween! Brooke and Owen had so much fun this year! Brooke was a tooth fairy and a bear and Owen was a lion, pretty scary huh?

Spooktacular Food

So I am a little bit nerdy and I really love making holiday themed food. This year I had so many fun halloween recipes that I couldn't choose just one and we have been having Halloween dinners every Friday in October. They aren't really fancy, but I think they are cute. And the greatest thing about our Halloween dinners is that Brooke who really doesn't like to eat anything that isn't pure sugar (i.e. candy, ice cream, cookies, and cake are all favorites)has been so excited about the food that she has gobbled it up without complaining, now that is praise indeed!

Mummy Hot Dogs

Jell-O Jack-o-Lanters

Ghostly Pudding

Scary Shepherd's Pie
We were all just getting over the flu when I made this so I got tired and lost patience with piping the potatoes and it looks kind of pathetic, it really is supposed to look like this:


I haven't made these things yet, I'm planning on making them this weekend.
Mummy Pizza

Eye Popping Soup

Rice Krispy Monsters

Most of these recipes came from Kraft Foods, the soup came from Martha Stewart and the rice krispie treats came from Make and Takes.

Pumpkins and Donuts

This year we had Brooke paint her pumpkin, while Reid carved the big pumpkin. It worked out great! She is very proud of her beautiful pumpkin and she also enjoyed gutting the big one! I opted for a polka dot pumpkin this year so I could spend my time making donuts, and it is maybe the cutest pumpkin ever, I love polka dots! So for our little pumpkin carving treat I made donuts from refrigerated biscuit dough. They were so good and so easy, we will definitely be having them again.
I wonder where Brooke got her amazing picture taking skills from, hmmm...

Family Pictures

A friend took some family pictures for us last week. I am really excited about how they turned out. It was so cold the morning we took them, I was afraid we would all look frozen!




OK, so the whole book thing is super cheesy, but I like it, so there!
Can you see my kids' blue lips? It was so cold!



I especially love the pictures of Owen, isn't it great how easy it is to get kids to smile at this age!





It got too cold to keep taking pictures so these last few were taken a few days later on a warmer afternoon. It was so hard to get a good picture of Brooke. She is at the stage where her picture smile is so big and forced it honestly looks painful. But after a lot of pictures I am really happy with these two!

Pumpkin Patch

I love pumpkin patches! They make me so giddy, I just think pumpkins are the cutest thing ever and I love seeing them all in the field and then all the big piles, it is so exciting! So we went today, and it was perfect weather, cloudy and cold, but not freezing just cold enough to know that it is fall! They had a little wagon ride, then the kids got to feed the goats. Then each of the kids got to pick out a pumpkin, I don't know what it is about my daughter but every pumpkin that she picked was like the ugliest ever, she would pick one that was totally mishaped and oddly colored only to drop it when she found one that was even weirder, but she did finally settle on one that she deemed "super cutest". After that, there was a corn maze that is supposedly geared to a kindergarten level, but we did happen to get just a little lost! Oh well, it was such a fun fall day!

Silly Kids

It is amazing what I let my kids get away with in the name of a little peace and quiet. Today when Owen woke up from his nap Brooke went in before I did and started bringing him toys. Before I knew it she had all of the stuffed animals and most of the books in his crib. They both seemed to get quite a kick out of it and were playing for a good 10-15 minutes before Owen decided that he would like to be able to move!

The other day when I went to wake Brooke up from her nap, she wasn't in her bed. I immediately freaked out envisioning her strolling around the neighborhood lost, when I heard a noise in the closet and saw this:

Yes, she fell asleep in her dress up box. I think she started out trying to hide from me and then fell asleep. It doesn't look too comfortable!

A Visit With Grandpa

Reid's dad came to visit on his way to a conference in Kentucky and we had so much fun! Living far away from family, there is nothing quite as fun for Brooke as a visit with her grandparents. She just loved all the attention and we all had fun!
Friday night, we went downtown to Rita's, our favorite ice cream shop from Pennsylvania. They have the best Gellati's, Italian ice layered with yummy custard, so delicious! Rita's might be the only thing we actually miss from Pennsylvania!

Then on Saturday, we went to a fall festival, where they had a petting zoo, wagon rides, and a lot of fun games and activities. Then we went miniature golfing, this is the second time we've taken Brooke miniature golfing and both times she insists on taking the ball up by the whole and then carefully putting it in. She really doesn't get why we all start so far away! We had so much fun, we just love seeing our family!