Happy Halloween

We carved a pumpkin and the boys painted the last one today. It was pretty cold this week but today seemed nice. Steve and the boys played football in the back yard after work. It was a good, relatively candy free Halloween. Pretty boring, huh?

New Scarf

I finally started using my sewing machine and I made Keely a fall scarf. I saw some 2 sided dog scarves at a craft show and decided that they looked really simple to make. So I did it! It's orange polka dots on one side and turkeys on the other. I went with orange because hunting season is coming up and she just happens to be deer colored! I don't think she'll be hanging out outside once she starts hearing gunshots - since she's now scared of loud noises - but it's better to be safe than sorry!

Look what the dog dragged in

OMG! Keely has been going into the woods lately. I don't know what she does when she's there or where exactly she goes, but the other day, she brought back part of a leg bone (or maybe an arm). Today, I just found this:

Halloween comes early

Halloween comes early in these parts. All the different towns schedule trick-or-treating on different days. We get Sunday. It seems strange not to trick and treat on Halloween, but this year anyway, it's was a good thing due to the weather forecast which says it will be really cold on Friday. Sunday's weather was really nice - a little chilly when the wind blew and the boys needed their gloves before we were finished, but it was a pretty nice evening for a walk. There were so many kids that it was difficult to walk on the side walk at some points.

Steve had the scariest costume of all - Dick Cheney in hunting gear! Noah was certainly freaked out by it and wouldn't even look at the mask. Ben liked the mask and even wanted to wear it.

Jakob and Ben got in a fire engine but Noah would only hang onto a handle on the side.

Steve and Batman, I mean Noah.

Ben's ear

So, last night before bed Ben slid down the front of my chair and started whining that his ear hurt and he wanted an ice pack. I thought he had just rubbed his ear on the fabric and maybe pulled it the wrong way. This morning I was just looking at him and I thought he had smeared something on the back of his ear while he was sleeping, but at closer inspection, this is what I saw:

My poor baby. He rubbed the skin off the back side of his ear! :{
We went Trick 0r Treating last night - could this be our annual Halloween mishap?

Soooo Tired

This is Ben Wednesday night. At dinner, he kept asking for more noodles and then he finally said in a very sad voice, "I don't want to eat." Then he put his head down and after a couple of minutes. . .

Lake Katherine Hike

Monday was a beautiful day, so we decided to take the boys on a little hike before it got dark. We went to Lake Katherine, where Steve likes to run and did a lot of training for the trail run he did in September. I think we did the 1 mile loop. It was fun, no one got lost, and everybody slept well that night after a dinner of pancakes at Bob Evan's restaurant. We were about a week late for the most beautiful leaves but it was still kinda pretty.

This is the top of the waterfall that was raging last spring, but now
it is barely dribbling over the edge.
We came over a little hill and Ben started saying, "a guy, a guy." I thought he saw a man in the woods or on the trail. Apparently, he saw a face in this rock. You can kind of see it in the picture. There is a hole that goes all the way thru for the eyes and a nose, mouth and chin. He's so smart and creative!Racing up the hill.

Pumpkin Festival

Unlike the Apple Festival, the Circleville Pumpkin Festival actually celebrates and exhibits the produce for which the fest is named! We went to the pumpkin festival today just to see what it was all about. There were thousands of people and literally tons and tons of pumpkins. There is, of course, poundage competition - 1325.5 lb took first prize. There were too many people posing with the gourd for me to get a good picture, but I got some others. It was pretty interesting, and there were some cute kids with some adorable pumpkin hats.

Fall Fun

The Bob Evan's farm festival was fun. The kids had fun playing games and going thru the straw bale maze. And the pumpkins sold so well - they surpassed the sales of last year.

Today, Noah's class had Farmer's Day. They all got to dress up like farmers or cowboys and we had a little party and made a crafty spider.

Saving the World...

...one appliance at a time. We finally got a new washer and dryer! The old ones stopped working well and were wasting a ton of energy and time so we decided to get new ones.

Love it!

Field Trip

Noah's class got to go on their first field trip today, so of course we had to go along! We went to Weber Farms and the kids got to do a Goblin Egg Hunt. They found some different shaped and colored pumpkins in the grass and some of the kids found some bigger ones in the field still on the vines! Then we took a hay ride and all the kids got their own small pumpkin.
The boys were so exhausted after all that that they both fell asleep on the way home.Noah, Tatum, and Ben

Noah on the pumpkins

Ben with his pumpkin

PUMPKINS!!!

It's pumpkin time in the country!!
My Ladies' club each year paints pumpkins to sell at the Bob Evan's Farm Festival in Rio Grand (pronounced rye-o grand). As it was my first year in the group, I had no idea what I would paint on my pumpkins, so out of the list of possibilities I chose to do Batman. I didn't really think that Batman would be that popular, and I couldn't find a good picture of 'The Dark Knight' that I could copy easily, so I had to find something else too. Much of my free time over the last 3 weeks has been spent finding pictures, tracing, painting, and spraying. I am finally finished painting and ready to help set up the booth tomorrow. And I am looking forward to manning the booth over the weekend! The painted pumpkin booth is very popular and it is even advertised in the Bob Evans kid's menu.

Here are some of the pictures. And we're keeping the Power Cat at the top!

Scarecrow for Hire
A few of my 35 minis

Snoopy and Woodstock

This one was just cute

One of my Batman pumpkins

Cornucopia

Boo!

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
embellished with nylon leaves hot glued
on to add dimension and to
cover up my ugly painted leaves

Jakob's last game

We had our last football game on Saturday.

On Sunday, we had the awards ceremony. The guest speaker was an ex-NFL long snapper and TE (played for KC, Philly, NE) named Mike Bartrum. He played in super bowls for the Eagles and the Pats (but not KC?!). We had fun talking to him about Kansas City.

Jakob ends the season with a score!

Between plays on defense

Jakob with Mike Bartrum, former NFL player.