Raking Autumn Leaves

The kids had a contest to see who could rake the biggest pile. Of course, Alexa won. She was the only one really raking.

Landon was pretending to be a scarecrow rather than raking any leaves.

That little pile of leaves was about all that Andrea raked, but at least she was trying.

"Helping" Daddy put all the leaves in the wheelbarrow.

It's hard to believe that we were out raking leaves just a couple of weeks ago. Now everything outside is covered with about a foot of snow.

Halloween Dinner

Joe was really getting into this scary dinner thing!

Because Halloween fell on a Sunday this year, we had two spooky dinners. One on Saturday nitht when all the Halloween festivities were celebrated and one on Halloween night. We had mummy dogs, slugs (mandarin oranges), witches fingers (cheetos), and witches brew (orange kool-aid with dry ice in it) on the first night and mummy meatloaf with sweet potatoes (because they're orange) on the second night. The kids had a great time and actually ate their dinner without us having to constantly harp on them!

Halloween Costumes

Here's a shot of all the kids together

Alexa was a witch (We tried to make her look like an ugly witch, but she was still beautiful!)

Landon was a SCARY vampire


Andrea was Alexa's black cat

Rylan was a cute little lion (He, however, hated this costume. Right after this picture we had to take the hood off because the mane was driving him crazy.)

Halloween Festivities

Carving the pumpkin and decorating Halloween sugar cookies . . . always fun, but always an absolute chaotic mess! The kids went a little overboard on the candies that decorated the cookies. Oh well, hopefully Joe's home teaching families enjoyed them and realized that our kids did the decorating.

Boys will be boys!

A couple of weeks ago, we were on our way to church. It was a rainy Sunday morning. Joe is in the bishopric and so Sunday mornings are always a little hectic for me to get all the kids ready for church by myself and out the door to be to church by 9:00 AM. We are always running late, and so when Alexa informed me that Landon had a worm with him in the car, I had to just laugh. He had found a worm in the driveway as he was getting in the car and decided that he was going to bring that worm to church. The thing that makes me laugh is that he could not understand why I wouldn't let him bring that worm into sacrament meeting. He said, "Mom, he's quiet." We had to let the worm go free in the church lawn on our way into the building. After church, he remembered his worm and tried to find it before we went home. Of course, he was unsuccessful (much to my relief!) Because I grew up with all sisters, this whole boy thing has been quite an experience!