busy

Thankfully, I get pictures like this from Matix's teacher during the day. I know he's having fun and keeping busy doing big 4 year old things...

But I still don't want to tell him that life goes on without him.  He tells me, "It's okay mom, I'm ready to go home now and play with you, so you won't be sad."...  Little does he know, but we go on lots of play dates withOUT him. Poor thing.

witches lunch

My friends, Lindsay and Lindsey (thank heavens for the 80's and all the repeat names, right?) threw a witches lunch! I guess they do it every year, and you bet I will be stealing this when we move if our new place doesn't have anything like this. It was too cute.  All the girls wore witches attire and the kids could wear their Halloween costumes, whatever they were.

The two hostesses for the party and I all wore purple and black, very witchy colors if you ask me... :)  And of course, Hawken wouldn't leave my leg for the picture.  Oh well.

Matix missed out because he was at school. I only felt a little bad, but he really loves his school and would have been upset to miss it.  Hawken wore his Bumblebee costume and Lullaby (last minute) was  a black cat. She was going to be a bumblebee (the insect), but I hadn't gotten the costume from Charla yet. She was so patient getting her makeup on. I was impressed.

There were a few activities for the kids too. Trick-or-Treating at the neighbors house. The kids loved parading their cool costumes accross the street and getting treats. What kid wouldn't?

Halloween coloring pages.

Pumpkin decorating.

I attempted to get a picture of me with my kids and this is what I got.  For some reason they were super crabby about pictures this day...

I even won one of the prizes for my witch costume. So fun!

Hawken, Graham, and Carson in their costumes. First I asked them to stand together, than I asked them to make some cool poses... Check out Hawken!

Megan and I trying to get some pictures in character. She was a goth witch and I was a... regular witch? We had fun anyway. It was so hard to keep a straight face with her posing like this.

When the party was over, we went to pick up Matix. I wiped the black off of my lips before I went into his school. He didn't really understand what we were talking about when we said we went to a witches lunch, but he was bummed that he didn't get to play with Carson or Allie, so we stayed at their house for a little while and played until it was apparent that they needed naps.  They crashed in the car on the way home. They were so tired!

friends

We had a day full of friends last week. Afternoon with Dries and Petal (while Charla performed with her choir and Peter went to listen)...  Sandbox, trampoline wrestling, snuggling, static hair and tricycle racing.

Then we had an evening and dinner with the Rogers family. Dinner, cooked by Megan, as always, was perfect. Matix followed his dinner with a large glass of water and a ride on Carson's 4-wheeler.  For some reason these pictures make me crack up.

I don't know what we will do without all these friends when we move. We love them so much.

praying mantis

Paul found this tiny praying mantis hiding on our pumpkin pile on our front porch and Matix wanted to hold it. He is so brave.

Hawken got brave enough to touch it, and loved it until it crawled up to Matix's face and pinched/bit him.  He was a feisty little praying mantis and did not like to be held.

pumpkin carving

We had some friends over to carve pumpkins last weekend. We had really nice weather, thankfully, because this weekend was a lot cooler. I would say colder, but I just talked to one of my sisters in  Wisconsin where it's really cold.  So it is cool here.  The big picnic table was perfect for all those pumpkins. Guts and gross stuff were left outside and no clean up for me. Perfect party.

Some friends were more serious about the carving than others. Russell brought his dremel.  Yup. That serious.

Out of the three pumpkins we had for our kids to carve, only two were completed and only one got it's picture taken. This is Matix's pumpkin. Per his request, his had star eyes, a Christmas tree nose and Skeletor (thank you He-Man) teeth.

Hawken's had big moon eyes, a tiny moon nose and scary triangle teeth, he even helped draw it on there before Paul cut it out.  Sadly, the ants here thought his looked too tasty, and gobbled it up in only 2 days.  There is nothing left of his, and Matix's is looking pretty sad now too.  At least we can still do Lullaby's with a candle on the porch on Halloween. I think I will wait until the day of to do it though.

Paul showing the insides of the pumpkins to the boys, who proclaimed it to be "just disgusting!"

Lullaby tasted it, of course and thought it was not very good. The faces she made were funny, but she kept on trying it, so maybe it wasn't that bad...

Inside, there were some cookies to decorate, and the kids who discovered it took full advantage.

There was also some dress-up going on and talking about what everyone would be for Halloween.  Matixmous-Prime and Michael-Bee were showing off some of their moves. Michael goes to Matix's preschool and they had so much fun playing together.

Some of the final-ish products.  

(Love this last picture!)  Lots of people still had details they wanted to add to their pumpkins before they would be called finished, including us. It was so fun having everyone over to do this, especially since we would be doing it anyway. The more the merrier.