Eye See You

Sophie's class carved pumpkins for their Halloween party today. We've carved very few pumpkins as a family, so this was especially fun for our girl. She was happy to show off her design when she got home.

The Scarecrow

Today started out cold, but ended gloriously warm. Topher, Sophie, and I spent a good chunk of time outside after school. They used that time to build a scarecrow for our garden. I confess that it looked more like a scarecrow before I took the shirt off of it, but it was a shirt that still fits Topher and is in his current wardrobe rotation. Even though I took his shirt, I let him keep his plastic bag head.

Candy Grab

We had our church Trunk or Treat tonight. We brought:

A firefighter,

an elf queen,

a haunted doll,

bad luck (he carried an umbrella open inside and then borrowed his friend's dinosaur costume while outside),

a steampunk viking cyberpunk pirate who moved too quickly while I took his picture,

a witch, and a dad who handed out king size candy bars. It was warm and felt nice being outside. If only Halloween can be the same.

He Lisps Now

He's down two more teeth! One on the bottom came out on Saturday and the remaining front tooth on top came out on Sunday on the way home from church.

In Case You Forgot

Topher wrote this out when we got home from church yesterday. It says, translated from the kindergartener spelling, "Jesus loves us." I think it's a good reminder.

Light It Up

According to Bryan, I remodeled the kitchen today. I did alter it, but only slightly. In my haste I failed to take a before picture, so I had to go looking for one. On Peter's birthday last year I caught a glimpse of the area I changed.

See that scalloped piece of wood above the sink?

Well, it's not there anymore.

I'll be making more changes to this room, but for now I'm thrilled to have more light in the kitchen!

Boo to You!

The Boo Bash was extra early this year. I suspect that's part of the reason that I outsourced costume creation to Amazon and Costco. Sophie decided early on that she wanted to be an "Elvin Princess" and we searched until we found this ensemble.

The inspiration for Phoebe's creepy doll costume came from the dress. She occasionally gets a bag of hand-me-downs from a girl at church who is a few years older than Phoebe. This dress was in the most recent bag. She was going to pass it on to Goodwill at first, then she realized it had costume potential. Topher was going to be a polar bear until we were at Costco back in August and he saw this fire fighter costume. It'll be perfect if Halloween is cold. And bonus, it's covered in reflective stripes. Cooper decided he was too old to dress up until the morning of. That's when he asked me to pull last year's costume out of the basement. And Peter didn't join us this year. He had forgotten to add the Boo Bash to his conflict sheet for the fall play at the high school, so he was at rehearsal.

There were plenty of fun activities for the kids. They made masks.

They threw (plastic) axes.

Phoebe found a matching baby doll friend.

Also, dinosaurs.

We ended the night by meeting two men in red: Santa and the red M&M.

As we walked our tired selves to the van at the end of the event I grabbed this blurry selfie with Bryan, to prove we were there.

Doll Face

We just got home from our first costumed Halloween party of the season. Phoebe's costume required some makeup. She says she's a "creepy baby doll." 

Yeah, I agree, that counts as creepy.

A Balancing Act

Homecoming with Friends

The Homecoming dance was last Saturday evening. Peter didn't want to take a date, but he did want to go with a group of friends. They didn't have their plans sorted until just before the dance. As far as I'm aware there were no fancy dinners beforehand, everybody just showed up at the dance.

Cooper had expressed interest in going, definitely by himself. We got him a ticket with the rule that he needed to have a group to go with. Up until an hour before the dance, he didn't have one. He finally agreed to hang out with Peter's friends and they both got ready. 

They had fun, but nobody did much dancing. Cooper found a friend from church who had made a similar last minute choice to go, so he had a group of people separate from Peter.

I was totally out of commission with a migraine, so Bryan did all the driving and picture taking. I don't think they intended to match each other, they just wanted to both be a little more casual. You can always tell when Bryan is the photographer because the camera is eye level with Peter.