Halloween & Pumpkin Activities

Because the boys had worn their costumes prior to Halloween, once the actual holiday rolled around, Cody and Jaden knew just what to do! They loved telling people that they were going to be a "Cowboy-Inden." (Yes, most of the time, each boy recited both costumes as his own!) Cody and Jaden were also very proud to hold their own candy buckets and were very ready to get them filled up! Here are the boys before our trick-or-treating outing. Gotta love those cheesy smiles! :)

The weather on Halloween evening was beautiful! Daddy said it was one of the warmest Halloweens that he could ever remember (other than our trip last year to balmy Texas!). It had been in the upper 50s that day, so we figured the boys would do okay without jackets.

Here is a little Halloween interview, before we set out. You can definitely sense the boys' excitement!

First, we walked around our neighborhood and visited the 8-9 neighbors that we know fairly well. Jaden and Cody really did happily hold their own buckets the entire way! They did a great job of saying "trick-or-treat" and then "thank you" at every home. We were excited that other people seemed to actually understand them! :)

Following our neighborhood walk, we hopped into the van and drove to 5 or 6 homes of church members who live in our same area of town. Both boys definitely seemed to enjoy their evening. Jason and I were especially proud of them because this was our first out-of-the-house adventure since we started potty training. Both boys stayed dry the entire evening out! Yay!

Later on Halloween weekend, we did some activities with our pumpkins. (With our heavy focus on potty training that week, we didn't get to these activities prior to Halloween. Thankfully, the boys didn't care or even notice!) First, we opened up our pumpkin. Jaden and Cody were very curious to see what was inside.

After touching the slimy insides once...

... both boys were content to simply use a spoon!

Cody was especially interested in the insides of the pumpkin and stuck with the scooping for quite some time! (This was a great activity to keep him occupied while Mommy was handling Jaden's need to go in and out, and in and out, and in and out of the bathroom.)

We kept our carving VERY basic this year (partially because Mommy forgot to buy a smaller carving knife and partly because basic was all we could handle amidst our concurrent bathroom adventures... notice Jaden's new pair of pants in the final pic!). 

We, did, however copy our basic pumpkin face from a book that the boys have really enjoyed reading this year called The Pumpkin Patch Parable. Cody and Jaden were particularly excited to see the glowing, candle-lit pumpkin inside our darkened bathroom.

The only other pumpkin craft that we did this year was to paint our pumpkins. We used the same pumpkins that the boys had received at the HarvestFest earlier in the month. You can probably see their Sharpie designs alongside the new paint!

Both boys picked out their own colors and very methodically added color to their pumpkin.

After the little pumpkins were done, the boys painted our large family pumpkin.

We've really enjoyed seeing Jaden and Cody's increased interest in doing holiday activities this year. I know it'll grow even more next year!