October 2021

 I've run out of clever ways to start these monthly posts, so we'll just jump straight in (maybe they weren't ever clever anyhow?). 

For General Conference, we had a store where the kids could earn Conference Cash to spend on candy and other goodies during breaks. One of the challenges was for the kids to draw the speakers and it was my favorite part! 

Cameron's drawing of D Todd Christofferson

Halloween 2020

 Like everything else since March of this year, Halloween was quite different for us. We told the kids several weeks before-hand that because of Covid, we would not be trick-or treating. 

They all still wanted to dress up and we told them they could each pick a Halloween decoration. Kimball chose a human skeleton, Cameron a dog skeleton, Lily a cat skeleton, and Becca a lizard. Kimball also convinced me to get Dale a fish skeleton. The girls loved their skeletons and did everything with them for several days! They would sleep with them, cover them up with blankets, feed them some of their cereal, and more. It was super cute and somewhat macabre. :)

Halloween Fun

As always, Halloween was a whirlwind of events leading up to the actual day involving costumes, pumpkins, and more :)

Halloween Shenanagins

Happy Halloween!

Halloween

Halloween 2017, you came and went in the blink of an eye...

Halloween!

Halloween was a hit this year!

Halloween

Much like last year, the theme for our family was Star Wars this Halloween.

October 2014

Kimball after face-planting in a mud puddle on the way to the bus stop

Judy and Duke while cooking dinner

Tummy time x 3

All snuggled up for General Conference

Lily chilling in the bath

Boys in costume for a friend's Halloween party

Lily helping Dale prepare for seminary

Judy and Kimball at the school pumpkin patch field trip

We also go to go to the Balloon Fiesta in New Mexico, and celebrate Halloween of course!

Halloween!

This year, the boys are obsessed with Star Wars. When Kimball said he wanted to be a Jedi, I thought "Sweet! I can make a robe!" But he wanted to be Plo Koon, one of the more hideous, obscure Jedi's. Thankfully, I found his costume online...I don't know how parents did Halloween before the internet! Cameron decided on Darth Vader, and I decided we could do a Star Wars theme as a family...

I dressed up as Leia, Dale as Han Solo, Kimball as Plo Koon, Cameron as Darth Vader, and Lily as the cutest R2-D2 ever! Everyone loved her tutu. We were a hit at the church trunk-or-treat.

This IS the droid I'm looking fot!

 Because there was a high-school football game on Halloween night, our city moved Halloween to the 30th. On that night, we went trick-or-treating to some friends' houses and around our neighborhood. We discovered that if you go to smaller neighborhoods, you only have to go to a few houses, because no one trick-or-treats there and the people at those houses want to get rid of all their candy so they gave our boys tons!

 On the 30th, we finally carved our pumpkins and took our traditional family picture with our Jack-o-Lanterns.

A funny story...I had made a finger-food dinner on the 30th so we could hurry to go trick-or-treating since the city set the time for doing so from 6-8 pm. The boys were eating as slowly as humanly possible, so Dale told them if they wanted to go, they had to finish in 10 minutes. To our shock, the boys just weren't hurrying and we realized they weren't going to finish in time. I couldn't stand the thought of them missing out on trick-or-treating, so Dale compromised and said for each extra minute we had to wait for them to finish, the boys would have to wait an extra day to eat their candy.

Kimball finished in time to get his candy on November 5th, and Cameron on Nov. 8th. We couldn't believe that even the motivation of getting candy sooner didn't get the boys to eat faster. At first, Kimball thought we just weren't going trick-or-treating since he didn't finish in time, and calmly went to put his PJs on without complaint.

Punishment never works for the boys because they just accept it (threatening to take away toys, they offer to put them in the take-away box). At least they are easy going and accept their punishment willingly, but they never seem very motivated the next time.

When they finally did get their candy, the prayed in gratitude for that candy and asked that they wouldn't get sick from all of their candy.

Halloween 2013

Kimball decided he wanted to be Bumblebee from the Transformers for Halloween and I was really stressing on how I was going to make his costume, until I went to the local children's consignment sale and found a Bumblebee costume for $6! You can't beat that :). I also found a dinosaur costume for Cameron so everyone (including me!) was happy...

I LOVE this picture of Cam smiling up at Kimball!

On Halloween, Cameron's class went to a local theater to watch a Halloween movie, and I got to join him...

 Afterwards, we baked a bunch of candy corn sugar cookies to take to Kimball's class Halloween party...his class played a bunch of games and it was fun to see both of my boys interacting with their classmates.

That night our ward had a trunk-or-treat where Cameron mastered the "hit-and-run" technique of going to every trunk whether it was supervised or not and ended up with at least twice as much candy as Kimball (who spent most of his time inside playing the games). 

We carved our pumpkins with my pumpkin as an American flag, Dale & Kimball carving a spooky face and Cameron designing his own pumpkin face...

We went trick-or-treating to the "popular" neighborhood this year which ended up being a crazy mass of people walking door to door. Next year we'll just go around our own neighborhood! It was a fun Halloween and it's so much fun having the boys be old enough to enjoy and understand it more.

Pumpkin Patch

Recently, Groupon had a great deal for a local pumpkin patch, so while my mom was here, we drove out with K & C. It was 85 some odd degrees and very sunny, plus the boys were totally off of their sleep schedule (aka cranky, sleepy, grumpy, etc, etc). BUT we still had a fun time!


 I was very impressed by this pumpkin patch. They had a huge slide structure with hay bales and C, being the smallest kid, kept climbing his way up there and pushing through all the kids there on field trips.

 

There was a hay ride with small portions of hay sprinkled over the bed of a trailer.

And of course a corn maze.

C keeps taking the pumpkins off our front porch and chucking them down the driveway, effectively driving me nuts, but hopefully we'll get them carved soon and he'll leave them alone :).

My mom has since gone and C still asks "err gama?" I'm so grateful that my kids have grandparents close by!

Happy Halloween

Because nothing is scarier than politics :)