Halloween

It was pretty chilly on actual Halloween. Jenny and Joe joined us for dinner and passed out candy at our house while we were out. Evie and I hit about 8 houses on our block before heading into the warmth, but Jon and Ollie stuck it out, Trick or Treating with our neighbor Keane who was, of course, obsessed with Oliver's cannon.

Family pic!

 First stop, our neighbors Marilyn and Calvin.

 Evie had fun helping pass out candy.

 Oliver lining up and organizing his stash.

 My darling little skeletons!



Harvest Party

On Tuesday, I was one of the Parent Volunteers for Ollie's Harvest Party at school. The three of us planned a fun party with a few Halloween books, pumpkin cookie decorating (and eating), pumpkin bowling, and Ring Around the Pumpkin. It was a fun afternoon, and I earned a whole new respect for Oliver's teachers. 14 3&4 year olds have a lot of energy and short attention spans! I could never be a preschool teacher...

Reading Spookley the Square Pumpkin

 Cookie decorating!

 Pumpkin bowling was a huge hit!

Pumpkin time!

We had such a busy October, we never did make it to the pumpkin patch. So a few days before Halloween, we headed over to the MSUMC pumpkin patch at their school and picked a few out. First we had to play in the leaves for a few minutes!

 Then it took awhile to find a perfect pumpkin. Jon told Ollie he had to be able to lift his!

 Checking out all the pumpkins!

 My little pumpkin!

 Daddy carved while everyone watched.

 Mommy worked on getting the "gooey guts" out. Ollie and Evie weren't really interested in touching the gross stuff!

 Drawing pictures of what they wanted their pumpkin faces to look like. Evie actually just demonstrated her face to Jon. "I wan' my punkin' to yuk yike dis", and opened her mouth as big as she could.

 The finished product!

Trunk or Treat

Our first real costume outing was on Sunday the 28th when Ollie and Evie's school held their annual Trunk or Treat. Evie was such a cute Oona from Bubble Guppies. We even sprayed her hair purple. She was loving her sparkly costume!

 Ever since the 4th of July, Ollie has wanted to be "the Army guy who shoots the cannons" for Halloween. Luckily Jon really gets into this stuff. I just bought the costume, and he spent a week on cannon construction. It shot ping pong balls, and was a huge hit among all of the boys and Daddies that were there!

 Jon and I were headed to a Wabash dinner after Trunk or Treat, so Grandma 'Rie came along! Evie wore Ollie's hat the whole way over.

 Ollie and his assistant Daddy who pulled the cannon for him!

 He had so many requests to fire his cannon, and people kept wanting to take his picture.

 Their first trunk stop!

 People really go all out decorating their cars. It is a fun evening!

 Queen of Hearts mini croquet.

 Alice in Wonderland car!

 One of the highlights-the balloon animal people!

 We clean up nicely!

Wicked Workshop

On Saturday, we headed down to the Children's Museum for the annual Haunted House and Lunch with the Witches. This year Daddy got to go with us, so it was really fun! The theme of the Haunted House was Wicked Workshop, and it was very cute. The kiddos loved going through and getting treats, lunch was fun with dancing, coloring and they both got their hand painted. They also got some pretty awesome gift bags when leaving lunch. We then got to go to a little concert by Ruditoonz. We all had a great time. Sorry the pictures in the last few posts have been a little iffy. Somebody spilled water on our camera, so these are all from my phone!

Me and my buddy waiting to go through the Haunted House.

The front of the Wicked Workshop.

The kiddos all got construction hats when walking in.

 Crazy mirrors!

 E getting her hand painted.

 O getting his hand painted by a witch. He got a pumpkin on one hand, and a jack-o-lantern on the other.

Scary spider!

 They both did a great job of coloring. Evie loves to color, and you can find her sitting on the floor doing so a lot of the time. Ollie never wants to color at home, but did an awesome job on his picture. He stayed in the lines and everything. I was so impressed!

 Evie with her goody bag.

Zoo Boo

On Friday, Erin and the boys came down, and the plan was to go to Zoo Boo. Of course, it ended up being freezing and raining out, but we braved it anyways. Luckily the zoo has plenty of indoor exhibits, some of the Halloween activities were under a tent, and we were just in time to watch the dolphin show. The kiddos had an absolute blast. I ended up putting Evie and Ollie in old costumes so they wouldn't ruin their costumes for this year. Evie as Elmo was a huge hit, and Ollie loved being a fireman again. Reg was a Ninja Turtle, and Ryder was Thomas. Here are a few pics!

Everyone in costumes and rain gear, ready to roll!

Erin and me in our awesome witch hats! This is before we were waterlogged...

Bounce house! You can see that it wasn't crowded; they were the only ones in there.

 Pumpkin bowling. No wait or anything!

 Elmo Evie bowled too!

 Waiting for the nice volunteers to reset the pins.

 Teenage mutant ninja Reggie!

 Luckily the rain let up for a bit when we got to the Trick or Treat portion of the zoo. Here is Evie trying to chew through a bag of candy... She is such a candy monster!

 Trick or Treat! This is one of those scary pictures where Erin could be me, especially since we have the same boots and she borrowed my raincoat!

 

Puppet show

On October 18th, the kids were out of school for Fall Break. Of course I didn't realize this until Monday of that week, so I worked fast to try to set up a playdate. My friend Cole was taking her kids to a puppet show, and invited us to tag along. This was our first experience at Peewinkle's Puppet Studio, but will not be the last. The tickets were inexpensive, the kids got popcorn, and they absolutely LOVED Gertrude the Witch and her assorted dancing puppets. Oliver wanted to watch the show again immediately after it was over, and talked about it for weeks. They even requested that I find the spooky music (like Peer Gynt) that the puppets danced to so they could put on their own puppet shows at home. Looks like we may be hitting up Peewinkle's again in December for their Christmas show!

Waiting for the show to start

 Evie and her friend Victoria checking out the puppets for sale.

 View of the stage

 The awesome dancing skeleton puppets in the lobby.

Monkey Joe's

On Sunday before the Rans clan took off, we all headed over to Monkey Joe's to let the kids run around and get their energy out. They all had a great time!

Reggie, Lanie and Ollie on the giant slide.

 Here comes O!

 Oliver and Reggie play so great together.

 Double slide action!

 Yes, that would be Evie going down backwards.

 Ryder didn't want a girl showing him up!

 Eva is a little monkey and will go on every giant slide and climber in the place. Oliver has gotten a lot more bold as he gets older, but she is definitely climbing on the slides that he wouldn't even look at until he was at least 3.5!

 Ryder getting a little help from Ben.

 Cheers with blue slushies. What a great day!