October in a nutshell

Brace yourself, I'm purging pictures of October off my SD card...these are only a few! 

So...In the month of October.....

We celebrated Bella's 4th Birthday! (technically Sept 30th) We had co op preschool at our house and called it a birthday party. We had Ariel cake, made paper crowns, played pin the crown on Belle, frosted cupcakes, read stories, played outside and danced to princess music. Pretty simple yet very fun.That's what I love about 3 and 4 year olds!

We had a family party and ate her favorite dinner, opened presents and had cake and icecream. here's the bday girl opening presents, and enjoying an ABC book (that goes from A to D:) made by Savannah.

 Josh earned his Webelos! Way to go J!

Random: Here he is mowing the lawn in MOON SHOES! Totally awkward, but hey, what ever makes it fun and gets the job done!

 A favorite part of October for our family...General Conference. We took Grammy's idea of pitching our tents towards the temple and hearing from our beloved Prophet. (to learn more go to www.lds.org)

We also have a tradition (not pictured) of eating conference crepes, and playing conference bingo while listening. Can you see Lily folding her arms then bowing her head during the prayer ?

We also made a trip to Dallas to visit Grammy and Grampy! Grammy, Kjirsten and I enjoyed a wonderful weekend at Time Out For Women while Mike worked at the State Fair of Texas in a teeth whitening booth and Grampy took on my 5 kiddos all by himself! (thanks super Grampy!)

 Then the next weekend we made it back to Elgin Pumpkin Farm and enjoyed hayrides, games, face painting, mazes, pumpkin painting and the petting zoo.

(yes they are wearing the same outfits from the weekend before, I only have so many matching outfits:)

Then the weekend after that we had a little impromptu invite to go camping with some dear friends of ours whose kids are the same ages as ours, and who my kids love!  Very fun! 

 Random: Here is one of our fhe halloween crafts...a spook house made of gingerbread and candy!

Mike and I went to a friend's adult halloween party! We had a blast and I actually got Mike to dress up! We stole this idea from my sis-in-law Carrie. She threw her husband an amazing 40's birthday Soiree . I made cake balls and dinner in a pumpkin (not shown) for the party.

 Another halloween treat...spider web sugar cookies!

For our Church Fall Festival I made these...I'm pretty  proud of them..my ghosts and mummy cupcakes! I made fondant for the first time ever! This was an easy way to work with it for the first time since I just had to make it, roll it out, and cut circles and strips and just lay it on top. I got this idea from a craft blog (make it love it)
For Halloween Dinner we had witches toes, mummy dogs and alien tomatoes. We watched Hook and had a popcorn and candy party with our all the lights out (since we didn't go trick or treating on Halloween...luckily we had tons of candy from the church fall festival/ trunk or treat the night before, the library party the day before that, and the city fall festival the day before that! all not pictured of course:)
Here are the costumes one more time. Josh was a Mime (he thinks they are hilarious), Zach made up his own, he was "Super Hero Turtle Man" (thanks aunt Carrie for the personalized super hero cape, he uses it A LOT), Can you guess who Sav is? Bella was a Fairy, and Lils was a sweet little Sunflower. I am halloweened out!
We love the month of October with all of the festivities, but look forward to slowing down and enjoying Thanksgiving and Christmas and contemplating what we are thankful for and what we value most, spending time with family.