Halloween 2019

 Halloween is not my favorite holiday, so when Jack was going out of town over Halloween, all the festivities fell to me, including trick-or-treating. Now trick-or-treating is fine as long as I am in my house handing out candy to the cute little kids. I wasn't so thrilled with the idea of taking big kids around the neighborhood, especially when we got upwards of 6 inches of snow just a few days before and the temps were supposed to be cold.

So I suggested to the kids that we could have a Halloween party for our family with special food, a fun treat, games, and we would end the evening by watching the new live action Aladdin. They thought this was a great idea. I was thrilled to stay home.

These are the only picture I got of our festivities, but the kids all had a good time and didn't even ask to go out trick-or-treating.  I'd say it was a win all around! Now just to convince them we should do this every year...

Tinker Crate

For her birthday we got Ruth a subscription to Tinker Crate, a monthly subscription box that has some STEM project to create. Ruth and I had a great time working together to build her paint spinner, including building a circuit. She seemed to have a really fun time.

Ruth's 9th Birthday!

We had a great time celebrating Ruth's 9th birthday. She wanted a How to Train Your Dragon party with her friends. So we made Toothless shrinky dinks, tried to get Toothless to fly through a ring, played charades and had a pinata. She had a fun time!

Casa Bonita

Ruth had been wanting to go to Casa Bonita for a while. She was little enough the last time we went that she doesn't remember it. So we decided to go for her birthday dinner. The restaurant itself seems like it is going downhill, but the cliff diving was neat to watch and we had a fun time as a family.

Trunk or Treat

 This year I was really pleased with the kids' choices of Halloween costumes. I felt like they had some thought and depth to them rather than just something they saw while we were walking through the store.

Joseph loves the book series, "Fablehaven" by Brandon Mull. He is also slightly obsessed with bad guys. So Joseph decided he wanted to be Navarog, a dragon prince who appears in the form of a human and convinces everyone he is a good guy until his true colors come shining through. Joseph decided how he was going to create this costume himself, with a normal jacket that he attached wings we cut out of an old sheet (attached with duck tape!), as well as a construction paper mask on the hood and a sword at the waist. This is the essence of Halloween to me: creativity, work, and literary characters.

 Ruth loved the How to Train Your Dragon movies. She really wanted to be Toothless or the Light Fury, but we couldn't find a costume or a way to make a costume that would let her fly, so we settled with Astrid. I'm glad we could find that, at least!

Miriam was quite punny and decided quite a while ago she wanted to be a Disney Crews (Cruise). Ha ha ha! Rebecca was also a Disney Crews, but I didn't get a picture of her. She is fleeting these days!

The Pumpkin Patch

 We have had a tradition for years to go to Anderson Farms for their fall festival. The kids have lots of fun picking pumpkins, playing with all the neat toys, and petting the animals. This year we also got to watch them shoot pumpkins out of a launcher and see how far they flew until they splattered. Lots of fun! Miriam came with her friend as well, but I didn't get any pictures of her!