On October 19th we got to attend Joy & Jordan's Halloween party! We brought two creepy treats, Dracula's Dentures (homemade chocolate chip cookies with red frosting, mini marshmallows, and almond slivers--entirely made by Faith and Bud),
and caprise skewer "eyeballs" (1/2 grape tomato, mini fresh mozzarella balls (bocconcini), torn piece of fresh basil leaf, and a slice of pimento olive, drizzled in a balsamic vinegar reduction--made by me).
We dressed up, of course!
I especially loved Eric's mullet:
Joy did some cute games for the kids. They especially loved "fishing" for spider rings with sparkly pipe cleaner hooks.
On the 20th we decided to use some passes for Cherry Hill that I'd gotten on sale. In the fall they call it "Scary Hill" and decorate their mini golf course with a Halloween theme. We had a great game of golf,
the kids loved their climbing gym/ball pit, and we shot each other with foam balls in their air powered ball-shooter room. It was a lot of fun!
That evening we went to Black Island Farms with Tammy.
Faith even won a pumpkin because of her great shot with the corn cob cannon!
One of their favorite activities this year was "skating" or "snowboarding" on their feet down the baby slide. Watch out little kids!!
Those who can handle carbs enjoyed trying mini cinnamon sugar donuts and some deep fried oreos.
The corn pit was a hit, as usual.
We even picked out some pumpkins before heading home.
On the 21st, after seeing fried cheese balls on an episode of "Diners, Drive-ins & Dives", I attempted to replicate them. It was basically three kinds of shredded cheese barely held together with a little egg and bisquick and flavored with green onion. They turned out delicious!
Before heading to the grandparents, Faith dressed up her baby.
My mom did some Halloween games for the kids over at her house.
On the 22nd it was mustache day at school as part of red ribbon week.
The 23rd was crazy hair day!
On the 24th we enjoyed some pomegranate.
On the 25th we had a crazy snowstorm! Lathan and Christian had a ton of fun making snowmen.
Much of it was melted by the next day, but the creations survived!
The 27th was our ward trunk-or-treat. We had a lot of fun and got to try some delicious soups.
On the 30th we did our pumpkin carving.
Tony took the 31st off so he wouldn't have to stress about not getting home in time to go trick-or-treating, so he got to be a room mother and help out with the kindergarten Halloween party. At our station we had the kids decorate cupcakes in ice cream cones with frosting in little ziplock "piping bags" and tons of fun, creepy candies.
Here is Faith's pumpkin:
and Christian's (with one of Tony's above it):
We went around the neighborhood until we froze, then stopped by so that my parents could see our costumes. At the Braeggers' we ate chili and Tony took Buddy around to some more houses. Tammy didn't disappoint with her darling goody bags. We had a great Halloween!
October started out, as most months do, with the kids being silly. On the 3rd Buddy wanted me to take a picture of his awesome breakfast (Toaster Streudel & hot cocoa).
Later that evening, Faith had fun with some clay.
I wanted to post this pic from the 4th showing what kind of breakfasts Christian requests. This day it was bacon, "circle egg" (over easy), toast and hot chocolate. That kid is so spoiled!
Faith was already at school, but since he's in Chinese immersion kindergarten, he goes to school 3/4 day instead of 1/2 day like regular kindergarten classes. He goes from 10:40 am-3:25 pm Mon-Thurs and 11:20 am-1:25 pm on Friday which is early out for all grades. Faith has to catch the bus at 8:20 am every morning, so that gives me time alone with my little Buddy. The only bad thing is that I work Mon & Fri mornings, so Christian has to fend for himself, which usually means playing Legos or some other toy on the floor next to me in my office.
On the evening of the 4th Christian started Karate lessons. He really liked it at first, but has a really hard time when the instructor asks the kids to find a partner to practice their newly learned moves. He is just too shy to ask another kid to be his partner!
That night we made homemade mini pizzas. Buddy was thrilled that he loaded his with so much cheese.
On the 5th we decided to pick our pumpkins out of our garden. We ended up with one really nice one,
And one that we knew had gotten a hole eaten into it (by a bird? giant bug? rodent?) when it was just a wee itty-bitty baby pumpkin. To our amazement, it continued to grow, even with it's severe injury! We think it turned out way cool and deemed it the creepiest pumpkin of the year, and we didn't even have to carve it!!!
We also got a few baby pumpkins which were still yellow (not pictured) and this gorgeous rose off our rose bush.
On the 6th we met up with Lana, Tammy, Tina, Zach & Liam at Gardner Village. We ate lunch and went searching for all the crazy witches.
The kids' favorite thing, of course, was the face painting!
After Sunday dinner at my mom & dad's on the 7th, we walked to their neighbor's house who goes all out for Halloween.
Joy was friends with these people's daughter in high school and said that it was super scary to go into their unfinished basement storage with all these life-sized ghouls down there!
On the 8th we had white bean chicken chili and the kids helped me make some extra creepy rolls to go with it. Here are Christian's bone, skulls, and zombie.
He woke up on the morning of the 10th looking like he got beat up during the night. I told him that he must have fallen out of bed, but he didn't believe me since he doesn't remember it and he woke up back in bed. Tony says that he thinks I went in and pounded him and Christian's just covering for me ;)
It looked even worse the next day at karate. He had a real shiner--this picture doesn't do it justice!
On the 16th the kids decided to take Skittles swimming. A week or so before, we had gotten the little doggie lots of outfits because they were on 90% off clearance at PetCo. One of the outfits was this red floral bikini!
Sure enough, Skittles could swim, but she totally hated it!
For a school project, Faith and her friend Katie made this volcano out of rice krispie treat and had diet coke inside.
On the 17th, they got to set it off at an event with all the fifth graders and their volcanoes.
That afternoon the kids had their yearly well check doctor visits. Both are tall for their age, average weight, and doing great.
I got invited to sub at another neighborhood bunco group and they were having a costume party. I decided to throw caution to the wind and wear my skin tight sexy cop costume. Obviously, Tony helped me pick this out at the costume shop ;)
Here's some cute artwork by the kids:
Faith did this cute picture of a semi truck-
and a great room with perspective-
this is a project she did at school, a tribute to Monet's lilies-
This isn't artwork, but I had put it up on our ironwork project display. It is a certificate I got from my surgeon's office for loosing over 100 pounds and it came with two movie passes!
Christian imagined this cool house with lots of cool steps up to the bedrooms from the door on the bottom and a ladder to the hideout-
Fathi's tribute to Skittles-
and Buddy's (love the ribbon for added dimension!)-
We had this picture up of my Grandpa Quinn in his military training days-
Christian did this representation of the movie "Puss in Boots." It has the golden egg, the goose, and Puss in Boots in the lower right quadrant-
