Halloween-Related Activities

Here are some of the things we've done in the last week to get ready for Halloween...

On the morning of Michael's birthday, we went out to breakfast at McDonalds (they were having the Monopoly game...) and were planning to go to the pumpkin patch afterwards. Well, as we were just finishing up our hashbrowns (we bought like 10 because they each came with 2 Monopoly game pieces...), it started POURING down rain. Luckily we had parked near the door and managed to get back to the car without getting too terribly drenched. We sat and debated whether or not we should still go pick out pumpkins. Every few minutes the rain would let up and we would decide to go... but then the rain would start pounding again. Finally we decided to brave the weather. The boys had a blast splashing around in the puddles as they looked at all of the pumpkins. After being there for about 10 minutes, it started pouring again and we all got pretty soaked. The boys had fun though and that's what matters.



That night Mike had to work, even though it was his 28th birthday. So the boys and I borrowed Grandma's van and drove to Penney's to surprise him with some balloons and we went to eat dinner with him (McDonalds again.... we really wanted to win Monopoly...). I made him a giant Napoleon for his birthday. Basically it is a French pastry that has Bavarian Cream inbetween layers of puff pastry and then it is topped with fondant. It was beyond delicious and I was so glad it turned out so good... considering it was the first time I had attempted one.

I spent most of the last couple of weeks sewing Matty's Ninja Turtle costume. Here is a picture of the first time he tried the whole thing on after I finally finished sewing it. When I bought the pattern, I didn't realize how much sewing it would actually be. It was worth it in the end though just to watch him walk around in it.

This is a picture some mice I made for our Halloween party at church. The bodies are basically made of fudge and then rolled in crushed oreos for the black ones and powdered sugar for the white ones. The ears are sliced almonds and the eyes are candy sprinkles. The noses are little dots of pink icing and the tails are caramel squares that I rolled out. I thought they turned out so cute.

On the day before Halloween, Matty and I made cookies. We always have a lot of fun baking together and he always looks so adorable in his Power Ranger apron. Daddy got home from school just in time to help us decorate the cookies.
We gave Eric a cookie to eat. We didn't put any frosting on it. He wouldn't eat it. We put a tiny bit of frosting on it... he took one bite and then still wouldn't eat it. We gave him some grapes and he gobbled them up. Then he threw the cookie on the floor and asked for more grapes.

After frosting all of our cookies, we went out on the back deck to carve our pumpkin. I had gotten a pumpkin carving kit with stencils and Matty wanted us to make a vampire pumpkin. But after looking at it and all of the tiny pieces we would have to cut out, we convinced him that the "scary tree" pumpkin would look much cooler and he agreed. Matty started off wanting to clean the "pumpkin guts" out all by himself, but after a couple of spoonfuls, ended up asking for help. Eric seemed to think his main job was to either get the guts back into the pumpkin or dump them out all over the deck, both of which he succeeded in a few times.

On Halloween morning, we went with Matty's joyschool to another pumpkin patch. This one had mazes, fish ponds, a huge mine shaft slide and a 10-minutes long hayride to get to the pumpkin patch. It was just Matty and two of the girls because the other one is on a family trip right now. The kids had fun running from one activity to the next. Eric wanted to just walk around and explore the place and kept trying to wander off. We tried to feed the kids a picnic lunch, but a swarm of bees kept following us and we decided to go eat in the car.