carving, decorating, raking, and trick-or-treating

We really had some good times leading up to the Halloween holiday. For family night two Mondays before halloween we carved our pumpkins. The kids did great and I actually think Bo enjoyed it the most. Eden just wanted to use the knife-scary. She did not like the feel of the "guts" in her hands. Bo loved it! He ended up finishing Eden's. Anson drew a great face on his pumpkin and Barrett carved it. I just enjoyed watching it all and ended up carving the same face I did last year. Oh well. Unfortunately the warm weather has been less than kind to the pumpkins. You can see in the pictures from Halloween that they got pretty shriveled and nasty. Scary!





Next, we enjoyed some good old fashioned cookie decorating. Mom & Mike, Travis & Stacie, Tuck, Michelle and Beck and Amanda all came over for dinner and cookies. Things were a little bit different this year as my Mom had to spend some time in the hospital and have her thyroid removed. Scary, but OK. She is doing well and I will write more about this adventure another post. Anyway, we had a fun time and ate lots of cookies and decorations. The kids enjoyed eating the cookies more than decorating, but that's all right. What they really enjoyed the most was having Amanda in our home again. It has been two months since Anson's therapies with her ended and we all miss her so much! It was so good to see her again. And it's always fun to see the creativity flowing (not to dog myself and my brothers), but we all married such fun, creative people! Lucky us!! I only have a couple pictures of this adventure, but it sure was fun.




I got some sort of wild hair and decided to start raking our leaves up. Don't ask me why, it was just so nice outside one afternoon while we were waiting for Anson to get off the bus. Bo was a huge helper as you can imagine. He just liked to drag his rake through my pile and act real productive. Once Anson got off the bus and started running through my pile, Bo ditched the rake and did the same. Eden was taking a nap, so she missed out. But don't worry, only half the leaves from the front tree had even fallen at that point. This is the case no longer. Since the weather has changed and the winds have begun many, many more leaves are awaiting the rake. Anyone who feels the need and wants a free meal, we will happily have a leaf-raking party before too long. Let me know if you're interested-ha,ha!






And finally the big day. For the first time Anson and Eden were both excited to go trick-or-treating! Anson dressed up as Superman (yep, his same costume from last year), Eden was Minnie Mouse, her BFF, and Bo was Mickey Mouse. I can't remember where this costume came from, but there it was in our dress up chest and it said 18 months so I thought, what the heck? Too bad I didn't try it on him more than 5 minutes before we were to go and meet our friends from our ward to trick-or-treat. Way too small. Well luckily the weather was very cooperative this year, warmer than I ever remember it being, and it was ok that he had some leg showing. He did not seem to mind, thank goodness, and after Gma and Gpa Wood came over for some pictures, we were off. The kids were great and had lots of fun with our friends, the Andersons. Bo was a natural and even though he didn't say anything he would hold out his little bag, bat his long eyelashes and smile and walk away with several pieces every time. Anson and Eden did awesome and nobody had naps that day so they went down real easy after we got home. We stayed up to watch Poltergeist with Jerek and Holly. I'd never seen it. Not scary, just a little disturbing. A cheesy 80's movie-the kind you love to watch and roll your eyes and laugh and we enjoyed every minute! Yeah for Halloween!