Trick-Or-Treat

"Trick or Treat! Smell my feet! Give me something good to eat!!" The boy's learned that little song and thought it was pretty great!! Luckily, they didn't say that at the doorsteps! This was the first year the boys really enjoyed trick-or-treating!! They were running from house to house, so excited!! It was bitter, bitter cold that evening, which made it a little tricky, but look how beautiful fall time in Indiana is? The beautiful multicolored trees with leaves all over the sidewalks made it a perfect evening!! There was 1 house that offered us hot dogs and hot chocolate or hot apple cider for free!! They made their garage into a little snack shop. That was a pleasant treat too!

Look at those leaves!!!

Kaylee & Daddy

Halloween Hooplah

We decided to have a Halloween Party this year, possibly an annual tradition! We had 4 or 5 families come for a fun costume party complete with games for the kids and candy all around. We had a costume contest with 3 winners. We also had a spider search. We hid plastic spider rings, 100 of them all over the entire house. The kids each got a bag and went searching for spiders. The winner got a prize....yes, candy. Last, we played a literal "Trick or Treat" game. Each couple had a bag of candy at a station somewhere in our house. The kids went "trick or treating" to each station. The catch was, though, that they had to do a "trick" before they were allowed to have a treat! So each couple came up with their own "trick" to have the kids do.

Here's our giant spiderweb made out of yarn wrapped around our banister on the loft. The kids loved it of course. Then we adorned it with the fake spiderwebs. It was a hit! This couple used the spiderweb as their "trick" and made the kids try to climb through it without touching the "lazer beams."

At this station, the kids had to win an iPhone game:-)

Here, the kids had to rub their belly and pat their head at the same time in order to get their treat!

Look who is having a great time!!!

Halloween Big Buddy Party

A family in our ward invited the boys to a "Big Buddy Halloween Party." Each younger child at the party would get paired up with an older child at the party. Then, the pairs played games together, read Halloween books together, and had a fun Halloween snack together. Cooper got paired up with Chayla, an 8 year old little girl. He absolutely adored her!! He wanted to be by her the entire party and felt so proud to be her partner in the games and activities. Afterward, at home he would talk about her and when the primary would sing in church for the primary program and at Christmas time, he would search for her face and just grin at her.

Jaxton got paired with Chayla's older brother, Dainen, who was about 10 years old. And similarly, Jaxton adored his partner and wanted to do things with and play with him all the time.

The party started out with a costume parade as the kids got to know their big buddies. Then they read Halloween books to their younger partner. Next, they played partner games with beanbags and then ended the fun afternoon with a fun Halloween snack! What a fun day!

Halloween Costumes

This Halloween was a lot of fun trying to put together costumes for the kids. Cooper changed his mind a lot, until he settled on being Iron Man. Jaxton was dead set on being a spider. And Kaylee, I thought she would make an adorable black kitty.

There are not very many spider costumes out there to purchase, so I set about to make one at home. It really was pretty simple. We found black sweat pants, a black turtleneck, and a black beanie hat. We got 2 pairs of tall black socks, and stuffed them with newspaper. We got them sewed onto the sides of the turtleneck, then we attached each spider leg together using fishing wire up to Jaxton's wrist. He wore an elastic bracelet on his wrist that had the fishing wire attached to it. Then, when he lifted his arms, it looks as if the spider's legs are all walking together!! Jaxton painted some styrofoam balls that we glued onto his beanie with some antennas made from pipe cleaners. Of course he made sure that he was a black widow with the red hourglass shape on his belly. He was very very proud of that costume!! And it was a lot of fun for mommy to create it!! :-)

Cooper chose Iron Man. I would have loved to have made his costume, but I figured that my inexpensive creation of the Iron Man costume probably would not even come close to looking like the real Iron Man. So I gave up on that and took Cooper to Target to find an Iron Man costume. I did hem it for him on the arms and legs since it was a bit big for his little body. His costume was complete with the Iron Man mask, glove, and shooter. And another perk, his costume glows in the dark!! He was pretty excited about that!!

Kaylee was a little black kitty cat! She already has a costume for next Halloween when she is 1, thanks to Grandma Hutchinson, and when she is 2 almost 3 I figure she will have an idea of what she wants to be by then. So I decided that this may be the only time I can pick out what she should be for Halloween before she wants to decide for herself. So I found this darling kitty tutu outfit online and I recreated it, making a tutu for the first time in my life!! It was definitely a fun project! She has some boa feather ribbon around her waist that continues out to be her tail, and I found the cute kitty ears at Target. After lots of attempts to get her to hold still for her first ever experience with cosmetics, her costume was complete with her kitten nose and whiskers! What a fun Halloween!

Two Front Teeth

Kaylee's front bottom teeth are popping through her gums!! Hooray!! She has been a bit fussy lately, so they may be hurting her a bit. But for the most part, she is still a happy girl. One day I went to get her after her nap and found that all along the front and side rail of her crib, there were tiny double teeth marks where she would practice using her new found sharp teeth on the wood while she waited for me!

Pumpkins!!!

Grandma & Grandpa Hutchinson sent a package full of fun Halloween stuff to do. She even sent some pumpkin face stickers so the kids could decorate a pumpkin (rather than use a sharp knife). So here is the final products of the boys' pumpkins! Such creative kids!!

Autumn in the Country

Jaxton's PreK preschool class had a field trip to a place in Garrett, IN called Autumn in the Country. It was a farm that opens up to the public at fall time for hay rides, pumpkin patches, corn mazes, apple cider, and tours to see the animals. It was a lot of fun, again, being able to come be with Jaxton, just him and me.

Here they are watching how apple cider is made. The lady took about 25 apples and squeezed them in this old fashioned squeezer. 25 apples only made a small amount of cider. It was a lot of fun to see the apples actually drip into cider. There were bees everywhere that apparently liked apple cider!!

We took a hayride through the cornfields and around the pumpkin patch. Then, Mrs. Kruse got to pick out one pumpkin to take back to her classroom. The kids helped her by pointing out the biggest, roundest, ripest, orangest pumpkins they could find!! Then the owner of the farm cut the pumpkin off the vine and sent it home with us!

They had a real live corn maze. It was fun walking in the tall corn and getting lost for a while in it. Jaxton was just loving every minute being with his school friends. Afterward, they even created a corn maze out of hay bales inside a barn. So the kids got to run around inside there to figure out the way out. It was really a lot of fun!!