A Happy Halloween to you!

We had a lot of good times this Halloween. All the cousins got to hang out at the Pumpkin Patch and (from what I hear) had a ton of fun together!

These poor kids probably couldn't wait to get finished with this picture below. Every single one of them is squinting in pain. What great sports!

We also had a great time with carving pumpkins too. We got a really fun book that the kids were able to put faces on the pumpkins by dotting the paper with permanent markers. Ryan ended up coloring the entire paper that was taped on his pumpkin with a red Sharpee. You can see on his pumpkins face the remnant of the ink that seeped through the paper. This activity was right down his alley!

Chase was very excited to have a cat. He kept saying, "cat...meow!"

Here are the outfits Jaren put together for our family this year. I think he might have been more excited about the army men thing then the boys were. He thought the hand grenades and bullets were super cool. Do boys ever grow up? :)

Here they are...our all american heroes!

Grandma Ghostie's Haunted House

This Halloween, we're trying to make the season last a little bit longer. We made a haunted house that our Grandma Ford likes to haunt sometimes at night...

Our kids really got into the spirit of this little activity once they understood what they would be getting in the morning at times. They even helped me decorate it with spiderwebs. I think they did a pretty awesome job.

It wasn't easy to lift that house with all those spider webs keeping it down though!

I'm not sure what it is about this picture that makes me think they're excited about what they got the first night...I can just feel it in my bones (buns for those who have seen Murder By Death).

Something I thought was great was how J.J. decided that he wanted to build his own haunted house that the Grandma Ghost could visit at night in his own room. He made this house out of lasagna boxes and colored ghosts and monsters on the outside.

He loves the windows on his haunted house. They gave him a sneak peek into knowing whether the Grandma Ghost visited his very own creation. (He likes the idea of Grandma being able to get inside the house by floating through the walls.)

Another good find!

One of the funniest parts about this is that J.J. didn't make the connection that Grandma Ford was the ghost that haunted the houses, although I thought he knew. We called the Grandma Ghost to let her know that J.J. had made his very own haunted house for her to haunt as well, and at first he acted kind of shy. I wasn't sure why until he said, "Hey! This is Grandma Ford, not Grandma Ghost!" He thought he caught her being sneaky. :) Well, she is pretty sneaky sometimes!

Thanks Grandma (Ford) Ghost for the fun and very sneaky surprises! You can haunt our house anytime!!

A happy happy birthday (the big ?) and raspberry fun...

Yes, I am now 20-10. A little bit scary if you ask me. I did have a good day though! Jar made me a magnificent breakfast and cleaned all of it up afterwards!! I got showered with cards saying how my kids loved me and loved to play with me (presents don't get better than that!). I got to sort of listen to General Conference (more than Saturday at least). And after dinner we had a lovely cake (compliments of Jaren) and ice cream.

Look at all those candles!

Of course I had to embarrass myself by not being able to blow them all out, but really, you couldn't stick them a little closer together, Jar?

Now for some more fun...

We went raspberry picking for the first time! It was so fun for the first ten minutes! Then, because the awesome mom forgot to bring water, we had one screaming child, one whining child, and one tired child for the remainder of the time we were there. Chase really impressed me though when he picked the berries. He picked the ripe ones and was careful enough that he didn't squish them in his hand.

Ryan was stalwart. He was picking berries up until the last! He'd dump his bucket into Jar's bucket and then come take mine!

Jaren was the cream of the crop. He picked so much and worked berry hard. (Jaren wrote that...can you tell?) It's true though. :)

This little guy was so super good, as always. (Of course, his bottle was remembered...)

And here's our load...12 pounds of funlovin' raspberries, all of which we made raspberry jam out of. YUM, YUM!!