Emmie, Sooooo Happy!

Emmie loves Pixie Sticks. They are a little sour for her but that doesn't stop her from enjoying them. She doesn't say it's sour but says it's "spicy!"
Look how happy a little straight sugar makes our pink leopard.

Clay's Goofy Smiles

I can always get Clay to pose for a picture by telling him I will take a picture just so HE can see how he looks. It works every time. He loves to see himself on the camera. He had lots of fun trying on funny teeth and smiling for us. The red lips are wax. He had a few of them but he kept biting through them before I could get a picture. I took this one just in the nick of time.

Trick or Treating

Morgan 1 1/2, Madelyn 4, Clay 4, Emmie 5

We went trick or treating in Ione with our friends after the Trunk or Treat. It was a fairly warm night and it started out dry. Then the rains came and went throughout the rest of the evening. Each wave of rain soaked us more than the one before. The kids seemed to enjoy it even more because of the rain. They were all very brave this year. Emmie and Madelyn kept saying, "I hope I'm dreaming!" when they went to an extra scary house. Clay pooped out first. He was exhausted by 8:30 and I had to carry him. Emmie and Madelyn wanted to keep going and stopped at all the promising houses on the way back to the cars. Actually Scott pooped out long before any of the rest of us did. I imagine Clay will be carrying Dad back to the car in about 5 years.

Every year so far that we have been out trick or treating with the kids, they have fallen asleep on the way home. This time even though they were exhausted they stayed awake. Well, Emmie did. Here they are pretending to be so tired they fell asleep instantly upon getting in the car. See those little smirks on their faces? Clay actually was asleep a few minutes after this.

Trunk or Treat

We went to the church for the annual Trunk or Treat. The kids ran around with Madelyn. Emmie and Clay played bean bag toss and bowled for prizes. Then we trunk or treated to the cars in the parking lot. It was pretty small this year since it was on Halloween. Most people stayed home to pass out candy from their houses. Emmie and Clay had fun anyway.

Emmie wanted her face pink with white whiskers. Clay wanted a moustache and beard. Mom wanted him to have chest hair like Dad. Clay was all for that! I went as a last minute rabbit with ears from Emmie's dress-up box and Scott went as a republican. Shockingly we did not win any costume contests.

The Case of the Missing Pizza

Clay really wanted pizza for dinner before we went out trick or treating. They had a special pizza that looked like a jack 'o lantern...sort of. We also bought the cheesy pizza breadsticks. I put them in the fridge until dinner time but when I went to bake the breadsticks they were missing. It was so weird. I walked all over the house looking for them thinking I was losing my mind. Finally I asked Clay if he knew anything about it and he said he put the breadsticks under the computer. I have no idea what he was thinking. It had been sitting out all day but we cooked it anyway. We all survived.

Carving Jack O Lanterns

We had a lot of fun carving pumpkins this year. It was really REALLY windy so we had to take it in the garage. The wind added to the spooky effect whistling through the manzanita on the other side of the driveway. It made the typical "woooooo" sound you'd expect from a ghost!

The kids insisted on taking their shirts off to scoop out the goo. I wanted one year where the kids weren't partially naked. This year was a great improvement over last year however.

The kids picked out designs from a book and we taped them on the pumpkins and scored them. Then we took the paper patterns off and tried to make sense of the markings to carve them out. It's a little tricky taking a flat pattern and trying to trace it onto a round pumpkin. Clay wanted a monster which fit best on his short round pumpkin. Emmie wanted a flying ghost that seemed to fit well on her tall skinny pumpkin. They turned out all right but I like the ones they designed themselves.

Pumpkin Carving

Emmie and Clay each picked out a pumpkin for their own carving design. Emmie drew a sweet little face and Scott cut it out for her. Clay scribbled a crazy design and I had to try and cut it out for him. They were fairly proud of their accomplishments.

With the time change occurring after Halloween this year it wasn't dark enough to light them with candles by the time we left for our Halloween festivities. By the time we came home Clay was asleep and everything outside was drenched from the rain. We will never know how they would have looked with candles but they were cute nonetheless.

The Kids in their Costumes

This year Emmie was a pink leopard. Clay laughed and said, "Emmie's a leprechaun!" Clay was a skeleton pirate. He was even scarier than a regular pirate! I stopped in The Children's Place to see their sales and this caught Clay's eye. The store lady saw him looking at it and hurried over with a the accessory sword that went with it. Clay's eyes bugged out. He was going to be the Black Spiderman that he had worn to the carnival. Once he saw the sword it was his. Thank goodness the outfit was half off! The store lady certainly knew what she was doing.

If Clay was getting a new costume then of course Emmie needed a new one. She had seen this pink leopard costume at TJMaxx but it was really expensive and she already had a costume. I told her if it was still there when it went on sale she could have it. Luckily they did have it and it was half off the day before Halloween. The lady who worked there said some customers were about to buy it the day before.

Unfortunately the one for Clay was huge on him and of course the one for Em was entirely too small. I spent hours shrinking one and enlarging the other the night before Halloween. I nearly had to remake Emmie's completely. She made me take off the feathers around the neck and headband, "But Mom cats don't have feathers on their heads!" It didn't seem to matter that cats don't have feathers anywhere else either. I also had to line the sleeves because the feathers were poking her wrists. Ah ha! This is probably why the customers from the day before passed on this outfit. Try explaining that to a 5 year old. The kids were ultimately thrilled with their costume choices this year. I'm really hoping they will want to wear them again next year. What would be the odds of that?

Amador Flower Farm and Pumpkin Patch

I took the kids to the Amador Flower Farm. They have a great pumpkin patch and maze every year. There were 5 hidden scarecrows in the corn maze. It took us 2 separate tries with a break in between to find all of them. The maze was pretty good this year. Emmie was tired and stomped off in one direction and Clay ran off in another. Emmie came back and the 2 of us ran after Clay. We could hear his feet but there were so many paths we lost him. It was really windy so the corn made a lot of rustling noises. It wasn't long before we could not hear Clay at all. All I could hear were people talking and a child crying and the wind in the corn. We called for Clay and ran back and forth. After about 10 minutes of running in circles and passing the same blue scarecrow we had had so much trouble finding the first time half a dozen times we ran into a patch of corn that was very short. The crying child ran past and it was Clay! He was so hysterical I hadn't recognized his voice. He was shaking and held tight to me all the way out of the maze. It took another 5 minutes to find the exit but we did find the blue scarecrow once more! We had really gotten ourselves turned around. So that would be a sign of a good maze I think. We'll definitely go back again and hopefully Clay will have had some sense scared into him. I have my doubts however. Maybe we'll use the blue scarecrow as our emergency meeting point since it seems to attract us like the bermuda triangle.