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!

Fall Break

Jaden and Cody got a long weekend off school surrounding the time Grandpa and Grandma were here for Jason's ordination. It was perfect timing! We loved having Grandpa and Grandma join our family for some of our Fall Break adventures.

Oil Ranch

We've visited this ranch/farm/pumpkin patch in October for the past couple of years and have always loved our experience! There is so much land that we never feel like we're fighting crowds, and there is such a variety of activities to do. 

Matt and Kim's family joined us for our day at the Oil Ranch too. As always, our kids were thrilled to play with their cousins!

Cody and Jaden fondly remembered jumping on this large inflatable, the Kid Hopper, last year, so it was the first activity they wanted to hit up this time.

Since there was no line for the hay ride, we went on that next. The kids laughed so much when all the cows poked their heads into the trailer to get the hay. I was surprised that no one was scared by these determined cows. Some of the kids even fed the cows right out of their hands!

All of the kids enjoyed running in these hamster wheels, although the kids are getting strong and fast enough now that the lone hay bale at the end of the track isn't always sufficient enough to stop them! After a few tears, everyone learned to slow down a bit, and all was well. :)

Next, we tried out these duck races. Our kids stood on opposite sides from their cousins and enjoyed sending the rubber duckies back and forth along the water chutes.

In years past, we've run out of time and energy to play mini-golf, so we made sure to try it out earlier this year. None of our kids finished the full course, but they enjoyed selecting which holes looked the most fun (or perhaps which ones were easiest!) and sampling the course.

Grandpa, Uncle Matt, and Daddy sure got a workout on this next one! These "Indian Sky Swings" required some running and pushing from the guys to get them going. All the kids hung on well and LOVED going as fast as the men could spin them.

Next, we spent a brief amount of time in the petting zoo barn, feeding the goats.

In a different barn, the boys absolutely loved running around in this loft, sliding down the slide, climbing up hay bales, and jumping in large hay piles. This kept them busy for a long time!

Just a handful of the kids were interested in taking a pony ride.

Adley was content to just try out this tractor.

Our last activity was riding the train, the O.I.L. Express. We were all pretty hot and tired by this point, so it felt great to just sit and enjoy the ride!

Before leaving, each child was allowed to choose one pumpkin to take home. Given the enormous piles of pumpkins, this made for quite the decision! What a beautiful day at the Oil Ranch!

Zoo Visit

Another activity we did during fall break was to attend our downtown Zoo Boo. Kids are encouraged to wear Halloween costumes for these weekend events at the zoo. Adley wore her actual costume, but the boys picked out some outfits from our dress-up bin (since Mommy wasn't yet done making their costumes!).

The special Zoo Boo events consisted of 1) collecting various stamps around the zoo in order to receive a candy bag and 2) getting free mini-pumpkins. Unfortunately, we received misinformation from a zoo worker, and our kiddos didn't receive a candy bag. This was a BIG bummer to our kids, but letting them pick out favorite king-sized candy bars at a gas station on the way home made up for it. We did enjoy the free pumpkins, at least!

Aside from the Halloween activities, we enjoyed just walking around the zoo. Our last visit was about a year ago, so Adley especially was much more interested in seeing and talking about the animals on this visit. We all liked seeing the zoo's new Texas Wetlands exhibit, which featured whooping cranes, bald eagles, and alligators.

Each time we visit, some of our kids' favorite exhibits include the bug house, the petting zoo, the prairie dog exhibit (especially when they get to climb through the tunnels themselves!), and of course, the carousel.

Corn Maze

Our last big fall break activity was visiting our church's corn maze. It was very well organized this year and tons of fun! There were lots of cute photo opp stations outside the corn field. Good thing I have some cute kiddos to pose for me! ;)

We had an absolutely gorgeous day for walking the maze!

The maze theme this year was "Under the Big Top," so the actual shape of the maze followed the theme.

Our main job in the maze was to find 14 posts containing letter clues, hidden throughout the maze. These letters, once written down on our official corn maze paper, would spell out the answer to a puzzle.

Some of the clues were quite difficult to locate, and we had to ask for help on a few.

Our second job in the maze was to find the way out!! We were given an orange flag to raise in case we got really stuck in the corn paths. We didn't need to use the flag, thankfully, as we actually found the exit even before we found all the clues!

We spent at least an hour and a half in the corn maze, so it was quite exciting when we finally had our puzzle completed and made it to the exit. Hooray!

After turning in our puzzle sheet and receiving a prize, we played for a little while on the grounds. They had hamster wheels (like the ones at the Oil Ranch), volleyball nets, slingshots, hay bales and large tractor tires to climb, and corn hole.

We sure love these fall days and extra time off school!