Decorating pumpkins

We postponed our annual pumpkin decorating Family Home Evening until Tues. after Bryson had gone to the pumpkin patch. Ally isn't quite ready for real paint, but here she is enjoying some paint w/ water courtesy of Grandma M. I've noticed lately that when she's concentrating, her tongue starts to poke out. Jacob does the same thing. I love it!

Here are Jacob and Bryson starting to paint their pumpkins after picking some crazy and fun poke-in faces.
Here is Bryson's masterpiece.
Jacob was pretty proud of his creation as well. Can you see why he wanted a long stem?

Here is Maddy painting her creative pumpkin. She was pretty pleased with what she came up with. She used an ear for hair and decided to create an Elvis pumpkin. She is pretty darn creative.

Here is her finished product. She's trying to do the Elvis "Thank you very much" pose here.

Here are all of our pumpkins. Pretty great and creative if you ask me!

We usually carve one as well, but we just didn't end up doing it last night. It's been about 10 degrees warmer than usual and it was already hard enough to keep a pumpkin from shriveling up and molding in just a few days that it's probably just as well that we didn't carve it. It doesn't help that our front porch faces West and we get the hot afternoon sun on the pumpkins. The painted pumpkins fair a lot better and the great part is, the kids can decorate them all by themselves, mostly. We do have 2 jack-o-lanterns that you just plug in. They work great for warmer climates. :-)

Pumpkin Patch

Yesterday, Byrson's preschool took a field trip to a pumpkin patch. Here is a taste of the fun.

These are a couple of Bryson's friends from church and school. They enjoyed the horse and wagon ride. It was definitely Ally's favorite part. She kept saying "horsie" and "neigh" and loved all the bumps along the way. The bouncier it was, the more giggles and smiles I got from her.

Here is Bryson after he found the perfect pumpkin. Maddy had requested that I bring her home a white pumpkin and Jacob had a requested a green pumpkin w/a long stem. On the way to the pumpkin patch, Bryson asked if there were any red pumpkins. I told him no. Then when we were riding the wagon past several fields, I noticed that there were some red/orange pumpkins. He was thrilled w/ his almost red pumpkin, can't you tell! Leave it to my kids to want anything but the ordinary pumpkins.

When you see Bryson's pumpkin right next to the regular orange pumpkins, you can really tell how much darker it is.

Ally wasn't so sure about being put down in the pumpkin patch. She didn't mind the paths too much. Bryson is pretty sweet w/her. That is when he's not smothering her too much.
Here we all are waiting for the horse and wagon to pick us up.
Unfortunately, when we got back to where we started, Bryson dropped his pumpkin and cracked it open. Fortunately, they let us run over to the closest field and pick another one. The one we ended up w/ was the same type of pumpkin - just a little bigger and didn't have a stem. It was too heavy for him to carry by himself, so my friend had to help us out. We were in a hurry and couldn't find another almost red one that he could carry. Carrying Ally and the other 2 pumpkins was all I could do. Finding a green pumpkin w/ a stem ended up being a little more challenging that I thought and I ended up w/a bigger pumpkin than I normally would have gotten. It was pretty heavy and I couldn't even zip up the backpack that I brought all the way w/ both pumpkins inside. It was all worth it though to see how happy they all were with their perfect pumpkins. "Just like they imagined" they said!

We love Grandma!

I am really good at taking pictures of the kids, but not so good at getting the adults we love too. I made sure to get a picture of each kid with Grandma while we were there.

Bryson can never make a straight face when he knows that his picture is being taken. I sill think it's pretty cute because it captures his personality right now.


Thanks for letting us come and visit mom! We had a great time!

Scarry cookies

While I was gone for the day, my sister's and my kids baked and decorated sugar cookies. (With a little help from Dalynn and Grandma. ;-) It kept them all busy for hours. Here are the fruits of their labors. They were extremely proud of the results!

Bryson's cookies

Jacob's cookies
Maddy's cookies
Now they'll probably expect more out me when we do our Christmas cookies. I'll have to get out the piping bags this year. ;-)

Snow Wonder

Travis's mom had a "girls weekend" while I happened to be up visiting my mom. So I got to join Travis' mom, his 2 sisters and other sister-in-law for Sat. until Sun. morning. It was a lot of fun and a nice little break.

It snowed a little while I was gone. My sister just sent me these pictures. Apparently Ally enjoys the snow in small doses. She loved watching it fall, but as you saw in the previous snow post, she didn't love it on the ground.

What a little cutie!

Climbin', slidin', rollin', ....

One afternoon we went to a park near my mom's house. It was such a beautiful day and the kids had a great time!

My kids love to climb, especially Jacob! They had fun climbing all around this. I love the blue sky and mountains in the background!
Bryson was being silly hanging off the climbing tower. He's always making some sort of face for the camera. What a ham.
It was a pretty steep climbing wall. It made Bryson a little nervous, but he made it.
Ally liked exploring closer to the ground.

The slide was a little faster than she expected.
She preferred to climb around on the bottom and watch the boys race. It was neck and neck. They tied whenever one of them wasn't cheating.

There were some hills by the park. It looked kind of like a big drainage basin. The kids had a great time rolling down the hills.
Ally wasn't sure why they were rolling and somersaulting down the hills.
Quite frankly, this doesn't look like much fun to me either, but they loved it.
Here is Bryson checking to see if I got the picture of him somersaulting. I missed him, but got Maddy. I'm sure she'll be thrilled w/ this picture some day! ;-)
It hard to believe this was just a couple days after the snow!

A taste of Winter

The kids and I went to visit my mom over their fall break from school. Surprisingly, we got a snow storm while we were there. The calendar said October, but it sure felt like winter. I don't think the trees were ready for the snow either!

The older kids thought is was WONDERFUL and couldn't get enough.

Jacob started to make a little snowman, but lost interest and wanted to just run around and throw it.
Do you like Bryson's Dora boots that were left at Grandma's from one of his girl cousins. At least his feet stayed dry, which is more than I can say for Maddy's and Jacob's.

Ally wasn't really sure what to think of the snow. She LOVES to be outside, and didn't want to come in. In fact when I tried to bring her in several times she said, "NO!" and shoved the door closed. Even though she wanted to stay outside, she didn't want to venture onto the snow either.
Here she is crying because I put her on the snow to show her it would be OK. Apparently she didn't agree.
Here is Maddy's little snowman, Bobby Bill. (The opposite of Billy Bob.) She got pretty creative and used dead flowers for his eyes. They look great here, but .....
He started to look pretty sad as the weather warmed back up to where it should be this time of year.
What a fun taste of winter for us!