Happy Halloween!

This year, we turned to our closets for costume ideas.

Aeva and Myles were farmers.

Myles notified me that he positively did not want spots on his face....

No freckles, mom!

Farmer see, farmer do.



Introducing.......

Rhaevyn Raccoon Girl!




This is Myles giving me the "no more pictures" face.


Chris tried on part of Rhaevyn's costume.

You can't tell from the picture, but I am a beef steak tomato...

on sale for 99 cents a pound.

Myles, at first, was unsure about what the whole Halloween, trick-or-treat thing was and he kept saying he didn't want to do it. However, once he had his costume on and went to the first house he was loving it. He was all about giving a big "Happy Halloween" and "thank you" for being given, as he says it, "Halloween". As always, the girls enjoyed running from house to house and were eager to get home to hand out candy. They get very business like, the two of them, coordinating being lookout and candy hander-outer. What fun, what fun!

Pumpkin Carving

Tonight we carved our pumpkins.
Rhaevyn wanted a bat and a spider carved on the big pumpkin.
Aeva chose a cat face to carve on the smaller pumpkin.
I think they turned out relatively well.

This is the cat.

Here is the spider and bat.

I think they look better in person, but you get the general idea.

Aeva has been counting down the days until Halloween.

It's almost here!

Pumpkin Patch

This afternoon we all loaded into the van and went pumpkin pickin'. Well, okay, the pumpkins were already picked from the vine, but we picked out our pumpkins to carve for Halloween.

We walked through a cornfield maze to get to the pumpkins.

Myles enjoyed picking up all the "bebe pukins" as he called them and pretended that they were crying just like a baby.

This is the pumpkin that Rhaevyn and Aeva picked out to carve.

I took a picture of these just because I thought they were very unique looking.

Ahhhh, Aeva has gourds growing out of her ears!

To end our lovely Autumn excursion at the pumpkin patch, the kids and Chris went on a hayride.

The kids got complimentary apples from the orchard at the end of the ride.

Blue Nails and a Halloween Party

In the last week both Rhaevyn and Aeva have had their nails painted, and I painted my toenails and my fingernails twice. Poor Myles was feeling left out. I found him in the kitchen with a whiteboard marker. He had colored his fingernails blue.

On Wednesday I found Myles in the kitchen with a box of donuts, trying to pry it open with a pair of scissors. I promptly removed the scissors from his hands and had him run along to play. About 15 minutes later I reappeared in the kitchen and found Myles on the floor claiming victory over the box of donuts. He had managed to reach the box (even though it had been pushed back pretty far on the counter top) and proceeded to rip the top open.

Today we went to a Halloween party with four other families who are doing WAVA. We made popcorn hands with candy corn for fingernails, little tootsie pop ghosts, a haunted house out of a paper bag and Madlib type stories using candy bars.

The later was my contribution. I did four of them so each family could take one home and they in turn could give it to a friend, neighbor, etc., as a surprise for Halloween.

Each team took turns reading their Halloween story after they had finished taping on the candy bars. I think they all got a kick out of it.

Making popcorn hands.

Tootsiepop ghost.

All in all, we had a fantastic time at the party.

Tomorrow we are off to the pumpkin patch!

Loving and Learning

We are loving life and loving learning around these parts.
I am so amazed at how much I continue to learn as I teach the girls. I got good grades in school, but sometimes I wonder, "what did I learn?" They are sure learning about things that I didn't when I was their age and even in high school.

Today we learned about a small island off the Venezuelan coast called Curacao. I never new it existed. Of course my sister, Cullen, had probably heard of it because she recommended the book The Cay to Rhaevyn.

This last week we made inside out cookies, which really are chocolate cookies with vanilla chips. I am surprised they lasted as long as they did, which was about four days. Perhaps there is a benefit to actually putting cookies in the cookie jar instead of leaving them out on a plate.

Our little Myles has turned into a talking machine. As the family saying/question goes "what did you feed him, phonograph needles?" Opa and Ben will be familiar with that saying :)
Today he actually told me what sound the letter B makes. Myles has also figured out how to hit the baseball without needing me to throw it to him.

Rhaevyn and Aeva have decided to start a secret club where they will be working on inventions. In Rhaevyn's own words "going crazy with inventing!" Their big aim is to come up with a boy robot who can work on Christopher's car for him. They are also competing to see who can make it to the 13Th book of the Lemony Snicket series first. So far, Rhaevyn is winning.
To top off this entry, here is Myles' favorite past time at the moment...being spun around by Rhaevyn.