One day earlier in the month, I spent a delightful morning with Luke and Nathan picking all the tiny pumpkins we could carry. We brought home sacks and sacks of them (thanks to the research genetics farm...I don't know what they're doing with the gourds other than letting us take tons of them in the fall, but keep up the good work!).
We spent another delightful evening at a local corn maze. Jules, Abigail, and I were there with the 8-12 year-old girls in our church congregation; Neil and the boys came along since it seemed liked a fun thing to do. I was SOOOO glad that they were there, since we split the 30 or so girls into groups and there is no way I would have been able to stay sane and keep my group of girls together in the maze had they not decided it would be fun to let Nathan pick the route and just ran along behind him yelling "FOLLOW THE BABY!"
And he, of course, absolutely loved it. Almost as much as he loves Mommy's pumpkin muffins and Daddy's mulled cider.
That kind of fun can really wear a little laddie out.
Apparently I made these very beautiful baguettes sometime in October. Aren't they lovely? There's a recipe for them (and for the muffins) on my food blog (sidebar!)
My sister Mary Beth drove down to spend Halloween weekend with us--lucky lucky lucky us!!! And of course, fool that I am, I took no photos of her, but I DID take a picture of this gingerbread that she, Jules, and Abigail made while Neil and I went for a run in the woods. So. Photographic evidence that she was there. :-)
She also took every single photo I have of Halloween evening with costumes and the like. You guys, Luke's beard. I died. It was the most adorable thing I have ever ever seen and Mary Beth and I just got all heart-eyed every time we looked at him.
This was the first year that Abigail wanted to go with her friends. Part of me was SO thrilled that she has good buddies to go with, and so happy for her to have an awesome evening with them, but most of me was just sad that she is actually old enough that she's stretching her wings out of my little nest. It's a good kind of hurting. But I was sad enough that I also forgot about taking pictures of her (plus she got ready way before the other kids). She went as Emperor Palpatine again--that child does love her villains!--but ended up washing half her makeup off halfway through and changing to a raccoon. Good thing we had made big shadows around her eyes. :-)
Jules went as a Huntress of Artemis with bow, arrows, wrist protectors, half-cloak, Camp Half-Blood shirt, and lots of very dramatic makeup. :-)
And Nathan was a fireman, and Isaac was a ninja--thank heavens Mary Beth was there to appropriately fashion a ninja headcovering (whatever they are called) out of a T-shirt!
We had lots of fun trick-or-treating...I think this was the first year that we had decent weather!!! Kids even took their coats off near the end and it started raining just as we turned back onto our street. Then it was back to eat the loot, and then we sent the kids to bed and watched the third Hunger Games movie while we ate all of the candy those sweet sweet darlings had saved for us (they asked Neil, Mary Beth, and me beforehand what candy was our favorite and then made a real effort to select those whenever they had a choice. So thoughtful--I was really touched!).
And of course...had to take advantage of those post-Halloween sales because you never know when you might need to take an impromptu nap masquerading as Darth Vader. As my brother-in-law says, sometimes it's hard work ruling a galactic empire. ;-)
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