Festive Sunday

This whole weekend turned out to be quite Fall/Halloween themed! After our great fall walk yesterday, we continued with the autumn festivities today. After church we had a quick lunch and nap. (Just the kids napped. Grandma Cathie and I ran to Old Navy where their costumes are $5. Seriously, people: $5!!!) We woke the kids just after 3PM so we could attend a neighborhood Halloween party. Playground equipment, a jump castle, a table set up with mini pumpkins and stickers, and more kids than I could count kept both Eli and Maddux very entertained. Maddie loved the jump castle, even when it got a bit rough with the over-eight-crowd. Eli had a blast too, telling me he was jumping with 'da big kids'. He took a short break to decorate a pumpkin with stickers and foam stickies. Maddie opted to decorate her face and shirt instead of a pumpkin. And she cried when we took her out of the rough jump castle to take her home. But we had to do it in order to get in more fall madness. From the party we drove to a nearby church to pick out a pumpkin. I decided to not put a size constraint on Eli's choice this year and I paid dearly for it. I paid $16, to be exact! The pumpkin is so heavy that I can barely lift it!

After dinner (Pumpkin Pasta, to keep with the Halloween theme.) we set up paper and trash cans on the back deck to start the jack-o-lantern creation process. Eli wanted to cut it 'all by self', but that was obviously not going to happen. I did let him use a smaller, pumpkin carving tool on his small pumpkin. He shredded the poor guy, leaving him with many scratches and stab-marks. Lehr gutted the big pumpkin and then I let Eli chose a pattern from my carving book. He chose 'Flack Jack', and I got to work. Eli alternated cutting his pumpkin and watching me. Maddux ran around the deck, giving us a heart attack any time she went near the stairs and proposed a jump. 8PM came and now the house is quiet. Life is good.