Halloween!

 She's not a bit excited that today is the day.  Not a bit.

Obligatory jump on the sandbox cover.

While Elsa might not like hats on herself, she's intensely interested in hats on other people.  I think she kept trying to take off Nadia's.

She loves the camera a lot more than hats though.  So much so that a lot of the pictures I take of her wind up looking like this.

No costume for her after the last traumatic experience, but at least she's kind of dressed for the occasion.  She had a lot of fun handing out candy with Steve.

Posing with our pumpkins.

We went trick or treating with Isabelle and Rowan's best friend from school, Austin.

The whole gang.

The loot!

 She's clearly ashamed at being caught red handed.

Most of the time, she just sucked on the glow sticks.

For the adults, it was trick or sleep while the kids ran around hopped up on sugar all night.

No Trunk, but lots of Treats!

In preparation for our ward activity, we broke out our traditional 18-24 month Rhino costume this year for Elsa to wear.  It's the only costume I've had all three kids in.  Needless to say, Elsa was not at all thrilled about the hat portion of the costume.

I'm so cruel to take pictures like this, aren't I?

After this success, we decided that Elsa would stay home and hand out candy with Steve on the day of Halloween.

Others in our family were a lot more cooperative.

 Our cute witch.

Sassy poses.

I took the girls outside in the hopes that Elsa would be distracted by the outdoors and I could get at least one decent picture of her.  I was right in that she would be distracted, but most of the pictures turned out like this...

The girl doesn't hold still.  Here's the best of the bunch.  They had fun jumping on our sandbox cover.

Rowan came late to the photo shoot with school still in session.  Before we got to the church, I thought that it might be a bit of a bust since there wasn't a trunk or treat portion to it.  I was glad to be wrong.  It was probably the best ward Halloween activity we had ever been to.  The Young Men and Women had booths all over the church building- Face painting, photo booth with a green screen, bean bag toss, fishing, donut on a string, spook alley, remote control car races, complete with a chili cook off.  The kids had so much fun!

Say hello to Mr Indiana Jones.  The whip and gun stayed home, but he got to have them for trick or treating.

You probably don't need to guess that this was Rowan's favorite booth.  It was also Nadia's least favorite.  She HATES pressure or anything that causes her stress.  She was so torn for her love of donuts, but her hatred of any game where she is under a time constraint or some kind of performance stress.  I eventually went and asked them if she could have a donut without participating.

The bean bag toss was more up her alley.

Rowan and I competing in a remote control car race.  They set up a whole room with obstacles and tracks.  It was a lot of fun!

Face painting or rather, hand painting!  Nadia didn't want her face painted, so we opted for the hand.  She chose, of course, a cat!

The green screen was way more high tech than I thought it would be.  You got to choose from a variety of backdrops.  The man in charge is the father of Nadia's friend from preschool Samuel who we carpool with.  He works at BYU in the IT department so he's really tech savvy.  The Yoda behind him is Samuel.

A picture of the picture we got (thus the flash).  Our scanner is broken, but I think it turned out super cute.

The kids went off to the spook alley on their own, so I never got to see what they encountered.  All I got for feedback was "that was creepy, I don't want to go back."  Happy Halloween!

Fall Festivities

We are blessed to have several massive trees on our property here and it make for some great leaf piles.  Thankfully we don't actually have to rake them all as the rental comes with a landscaping service.  So we got to make piles just to jump around in and take pictures of.

Pumpkin carving this year followed a pattern from years' past.  None of our kids can handle pumpkin guts.

Rowan this year wanted to draw his own jack-o-lantern face.  Nadia followed in Rowan's footsteps, but needed a little help getting the details right.  And Elsa was voted as to wanting a kitty pumpkin.  Steve's still the resident carver and pumpkin de-gutter.

I love the color and size combination we ended up with.

Just before we decided to cover up the sandbox for the season.  It was getting too wet and full of leaves.

They had found a worm in their sandbox and for several weeks they were intent on building the worm a castle with tunnels and other HGTV worthy features so he would be happy over the winter.

Rowan had crazy hair day at school and decided green was the way to go.

Coordinating sisters.  They were so cute together.

Earlier in the month we took the kids bowling at my old stomping grounds, The BYU Bowling Center.  They have changed quite a few things up there, but my bowling scores have stayed consistently bad.

Elsa learned to jump in October and she loves doing it!  One of these videos had Nadia's friend Samuel from preschool in it.