Halloween 2013

Lots of fun Halloween activities this year:

Last week we went to a family Halloween party at our friends house.

The Rust family threw an awesome get together. They hired babysitters to put on some fun games for the kids in the back yard. The boys had a blast but Lillie kept sneaking in and asking if she could be a part of the adult activities. 

Minute to Win It Games:

Shalece vs. Aaron Barrow 

Jessica vs. John Farrow

Audrey vs. Tim

We had to pick up these bags with our teeth. I am just a tad more limber than Tim. 

I had all of mine picked up before he had gotten to one. 

Rachel vs. Garrett Jackson

Holly vs. Tyler Rust

 Fitting in a birthday party for Isaac Rust

Next up: L and S's school decorates the library as a pumpkin patch each October. They have you decorate a pumpkin as a character from your favorite book. Samuel's is Captain Underpants, and Lillie's is Stacey from the Babysitter's Club.

Our cul-de-sac is completely awesome. We've heard that they have fun block parties but this is the first one since we've been here. One of the neighbors buys a bunch of pumpkins from his church's pumpkin patch and we have a potluck while all the kids carve pumpkins. What a blast!

I helped them clean out the insides but they poked the holes in the patterns and did almost all of the cutting by themselves. I was super impressed. It took them about 2 hours to finish them and I kept asking them if they wanted help. But they were each adamant that they were going to do it. 

William, Samuel, KC, Lillie, Barbara, Grant, Autumn, Nelson

Lillie was not excited about scooping and she kept trying to get out of it 

but KC didn't let her get away with it!

The finished products:

Grants Monster:

Samuel's Ghost:

Lillie's Kitty: (with Grant as a model apparently)

Here's G helping me decorate cupcakes for the Trunk or Treat cupcake walk:

And finally....Halloween! And another block party with the cul-de-sac. We got together early to eat pizza, take pictures, and catch the early trick-or-treaters. Then we left our candy with the adults with no kids to hand out for us.

Tim and Autumn headed into the super haunted house. L kept begging to go inside but I absolutely forbid it. She watched Teen Wolf once and was scared for five months.... even in the daylight. And she just watched an episode of Once Upon a Time with me and has been scared of Peter Pan's shadow. This place had chopping saw sounds, weird flashing strobe light type pictures of psycho clowns and creepy little girls. It was definitely demented Halloween, not regular scary Halloween. There was no way I was letting her little mind get polluted by that. She can do that later by her own choice. 

Laura was wearing a beautiful kimono and her long sleeves were actually pockets! So she kindly offered them to be used for holding the kids candy when their bags got too full. Way to think ahead!

Our neighbor James came Trick or Treating with us. He just turned 2 and L has been having a ball playing with him. She was so cute and patient with him tonight.

S and his best neighbor bud William

The kids with their Haul:

What a fun Halloween season. And nobody got sick! Woo Hoo!

The A-Maizing Corn Maze!

Every year we like to take the kids to some sort of fall festival/ pumpkin patch type thing. This year we tried a Maize maze and it was totally awesome! We've done corn mazes before and have always loved them but this was our kids first time. Plus we went at night which I highly recommend. 

We brought along Lillie's BFF Abby who was spending the night:

Getting ready to go down the drain pipe slides:

They had hay bale races and the kids got really into it. Surprisingly they kept it a friendly competition:

The Corn Popper:

I have zero idea what this was. I have never seen anything like it.

 But it was completely and totally awesome.

Disclaimer: these pictures totally stink

Waiting in line for the corn popper:

 Corn Popping!

 This thing was like a moon bounce/trampoline. It was this fairly taught bouncy thing that was blown up by air the way a moon bounce was but it was buried in the ground and had no walls. There were a ton of kids on it and even the adults got on. It was crazy fun!

Spookley!

 Fun Farm Facts:

Givin' us the low down on Maize Maze do's and don'ts:

Here's what this year's maze looked like:

Our group getting ready to head into the maze:

The camera flash really lights things up, but let me tell you it was rather disorienting to be in there in the dark. I'm glad some of our group had the foresight to bring flashlights....which they promptly handed to all the kids.....who promptly shined them in everyone's eyes. Well, at least Grant did. I wouldn't have expected anything less from him. 

The adults, well, the male adults, and the teenagers commenced with hiding in the corn stalks and scaring right away. Our kids freaked out at first but then they tried to join in on the scaring too. Grant or Samuel would run ahead a little ways, hide in the corn, and then jump out when we would pass and shout, Boo! Unfortunately for Grant, he did not get that he should probably turn off his flashlight while he was trying to hide from us. Oh, well, he was none the wiser, and our screams of pretended fright delighted him to no end. All in all the maze took about an hour and our kids were not ready to leave it. Surprise, surprise! They wanted to try it again and we probably would have but they were closing and wouldn't let us go back in. 

More drain pipe slide:

These girls were so cute. They kept sliding down together and in a very monotone voice (which I don't think they realized) would say: "this is awesome!"

Samuel pulling his cool ninja moves:

Super fun night - this family event is definitely a keeper!