Halloween

Carving pumpkins gets easier and easier each year, as Cody and Jaden are progressively able to do more in the process. I love it! Removing the "pumpkin guts" is always their least favorite step, but they helped with a little of it this year.

Even Adley got her own pumpkin to carve this year. She was thrilled!

We love using thepumpkinlady.com for our (free!) pumpkin templates. The boys scrolled through quite a few options and settled on Dre (Cody) and Happy Mask (Jaden). They picked out the Carissa template for Adley since it had a bow. 

Cody did almost the entire carving process all on his own. First, he used a push-pin to poke holes along the lines of his template.

Then, he connected the dots with his pumpkin carver and cut out all the features.

Jaden's template choice was a bit more complicated, so he needed a little more guidance. But, he still did quite a bit of the process on his own.

The boys were quite pleased with their finished pumpkins!  

Since Cody was so independent this year, I was freed up to do Adley's pumpkin. She loved watching the face gradually appear and was absolutely thrilled when her Carissa pumpkin was done. 

My kids weren't interested in having coordinating costumes again this year. Sadly, I think those days are officially behind us... Nevertheless, their costumes still turned out pretty cute. Jaden needed to have a bird costume for a school chapel service in October, so he agreed to let this costume double for his Halloween outfit too.

I found a really cute idea online, and my mom helped me think through the logistics of creating this costume. She even helped me cut multiple wing templates out of newspaper until we had the pattern just right. What a wise, talented mom I have! It worked wonderfully. I was very proud of how the costume turned out and was thankful that Jaden loved it too!

Cody's initial idea was to be an ant, but we struggled to find a good costume idea for that. His second choice turned out to be just perfect for him-- a minion! My favorite part of this costume was using a canning jar lid for the minion's eye. This costume came together quickly, and Cody made quite the cute minion.

My mom came up with Adley's costume this year. She had saved an authentic Hawaiian moomoo dress that I had worn when I was Adley's age. I can't believe my mom saved this dress for so long-- and kept it in such great condition too! It fit Adley perfectly.

We just had two trick-or-treating events this year-- our church's trunk-or-treat and trick-or-treating in our neighborhood on Halloween night. Thankfully, even though we had a forecast of rain again this year (for the third year in a row), the weather turned out to be quite nice for candy collecting. 

We loved seeing some of our cousins at our church's trunk or treat. We make for a crazy bunch! What an enjoyable time of year!