Halloween!

Another fun Halloween!  It seems to be more fun the older the kids get.  Elisa chose to be a black kitty this year (thank goodness not a cockroach like she had been talking about).  Gabe wanted to be Thomas the Train but I convinced him to be Buzz Lightyear, since he had already been Thomas a few years back and the costume didn't fit him anyway.  Besides, we already had this Buzz costume that I got on clearance after last year's Halloween.  He didn't seem to mind not being Thomas anyway.
We did all sorts of fun things this Halloween!

A dress-rehersal of her kitty costume.  I thought I was being thrifty by kinda sorta making Elisa's costume this year, but it didn't add up like I would have like.  I think I spent almost $30 on her costume, with all of its parts.  On the other hand, more than half of that $$ was the leotard, which I ordered hand-made off of Etsy and she has been using it for tumbling and dance.  So, maybe not a bad deal after all.  Regardless of price, I think her costume turned out super cute!

 

Chick-fil-a.  They always have some sort of fun activity night for the kids.  And its always fun to get free ice cream and a yummy chicken sandwich for dinner:

An adorable picture of the two of them just before we left for chick-fil-a.  I think I may get it printed out.  Its not common to get a picture of the two of them looking and smiling at the camera, at the same time!

At the "science" station.  Gabe and Elisa liked the big bubbles.  Gabe stayed awhile longer at this table while Elisa got her arm painted.  He was enjoying himself so much that he knocked the entire bottle of solution off the table.  You can see it in the last blurry photo!

Everytime we go to Chick-fil-a, Elisa always gets the kitty.

Enjoying her free icecream

Elisa, unlike Gabe, will tolerate the cow.


With Gabe gone all day at school, Elisa and I are always looking for things to do together.  This particular day I brought out the play dough and made her some silly/scary Halloween heads.  She really liked watching me make them and then squishing them afterwards!

 

Our Goblin

 

Our witch

 

 Noooooo! Don't squish me Eesa!!

 Elisa loves getting her nails painted.  This day I painted her nails with ghosts.  She was pretty excited about it!

There is this house in our neighborhood that we drive by every day when we drop Gabie off and pick him up from school.  They go crazy with the Halloween decor.  The pictures I took aren't that great, but man those are some scary zombies in the yard!  The kids were fascinated by them everytime we drove by.  I would never ever want to have something that scary in my yard, let alone store it in my house for the rest of the year.  Yikes.  

Pumpkin carving time! Erik usually likes to be in charge of this.  He has more patience than I do for stuff like this, even though I'm supposedly more crafty/artistic than he is, ha!  We first went to Walmart and picked out the biggest and best two pumpkins we could find.  Erik skillfully and meticulously carved a Buzz Lightyear into one of the pumpkins.  I meant to carve something into the other but I never got around to it :(.  I unfortunately did not get a good picture of Erik's awesome pumpkin until it was almost too late.  Duh. 

 

Erik brought the pumpkin to the Ward Halloween party and it was a big hit.  So was my costume.  I bought an $8 shirt at walmart and used freezer paper and fabric paint to make a cute skeleton maternity shirt/costume.  A lot of people didn't even know I was pregnant so it worked as an announcement as well!  The party in itself was okay.  There was food but everyone inhaled it like pigs at a trough so there wasn't much it seemed.  Elisa and her friend Abby went off trunk-or-treating by themselves.  Elisa somehow lost her pumpkin and was sharing her friend's bag.  Silly girl.  Gabe went off solo but didn't seemed to mind.  He's very independent!  Erik dressed up as Dr. Who, inorder to keep the yearly "Doctor" theme going. I told him nobody would know who he was (heck, I don't even really know who Dr. Who is) but surprisingly a few people guessed right! 

Elisa's preschool had a Halloween party complete with trick-or-treating around the school.  She made out pretty good.  I helped myself to some of her candy because she needed the help :)

IHOP offered free kid's pancakes on Halloween.  So after preschool we met some friends and Elisa and her friend Abby enjoyed pancakes drenched in every available syrup flavor, garnished with salt and pepper.  Here is a picture of the two of them:

Later that night was officially Trick-or-Treating!  Erik was on call, of course.  But the kids were super excited and didn't seem to notice or mind that daddy wasn't there.  I took them just around the block (I figured they already had enough candy as it was).  It was really hard to get a good picture of the kids in action with the bad lighting, but at least I got a few pictures.  After going around the block, we sat out in our driveway and passed out candy while sampling candy from their pumpkin buckets.  I should have gotten a video of it, but it wouldn't have turned out good because it was dark--but it was funny to watch Elisa hunt down trick-or-treaters and insist she give them candy, even though most of them she eagarly approached had already gotten candy from us.  Silly girl.  After awhile I put them in bed and turned off all the lights in the house so no more trick-or-treaters would bug us.  And that was that for Halloween.  Or so I thought.  The kids discovered "The Nightmare Before Christmas" on Netflix and it was watch every. single. day. in November.  Thank goodness Halloween only comes once a year!

Some pictures of their Halloween stash.  This is both of their candy combined, although quite a bit of their candy had been eaten already!  And we STILL have leftover candy! I've picked through it so all that is left is hard and sticky candy, no more chocolate :(

I always like to sort the candy.  I don't know why.

Oil Ranch Farm

Back in October (the first or second saturday) we took the kids to the Oil Ranch Farm.  We've tried a couple different farms with pumpkin patches and kid-friendly fun a few years ago, so we wanted to check this place out while Erik (finally!) had a Saturday off.  I'm glad we did, because I think we enjoyed this farm the most.  The price wasn't too bad, the crowds were minimal, the weather was nice, but most importantly, there were lots of fun things to do and the kids had a blast!  It was just over an hour away so we picked up some Sonic on the way.  Elisa begged and pleaded specifically for a strawberry milkshake (I'm not sure where she got that idea in her head) so naturally we bought her one.  Can you say spoiled?  

Anyway, I think the pictures describe the fun much better than I can:      

Ducky racing

Train Ride fun!  Gabe's favorite part, of course.

Oh man this cow!  I never thought cows could be so aggressive!  I guess food is always an incentive for animals to go a little crazy and confrontational!  Plus this was a bull.  Gabe and Elisa couldn't decide if the cow was absolutely hilarious or absolutely terrifying! 

Milkin' a cow.  There was no way I was going to touch a cow's nipple, sorry.  But no one else seemed to mind.

 

   Horse riding.  Elisa sure loves horses!  They got to ride them twice.

 Playing in the hay.  It actually looks pretty fun, even for a grown-up :)

Goat-petting.  They're noisy.  And stinky.  I don't like touching them, but the kids did.

Now these little cuties I will touch.  Baby quails. They were seriously the cutest things I've ever seen.  I wanted to take one home!

Looking at the animals.

Silly kids.  They love sticking their heads through these things!

Pictures in the pumpkins!  The kids got to pick out their very own pumpkin and take them home.  The best part, of course!

Two little cuties

Miniature golf.  Erik helped Elisa "golf", Gabe kinda went off and "golfed" on his own, and I sat on my butt and took these pictures :)

A "maze".  Better than the corn maze we got stuck in at another farm we went to a few years ago.  I can't seem to find any fun or amusement whatsoever in being completely and utterly lost and confused, but this maze was just right for me.  Gotta know where I'm going!

More icky noisy stinky goats.  At least the kids had so much fun!  And I'm glad there was a bench for me to sit on and avoid touching any animals.  And FYI, my least favorite food in the world is goat cheese.

Elisa saw this "swing" and demanded that she try it, even though Erik was already walking away towards the exit with Gabe.  We thought she might be too little to go on it, but she held on just fine! She got her way.  Again.

The kids proudly showing off the pumpkins they picked out.

I wanted to try some farm-fresh eggs!  We bought some, only $2 .

Elisa Starts Preschool!

 After two long years of watching big brother go off to preschool, this girlie finally got her turn to go to preschool! She started the first or second week of October (2014), at Camelot Kids.  I couldn't find my camera (or its battery wasn't charged) so I didn't get very good pictures of her first day, unfortunately.  I also feel bad about not posting about her first day of preschool on Facebook, but too late now.  I'm just happy that I'm finally getting around to posting about it here :)
She's been really enjoying preschool so far, and I'm not surprised. She's taken home a couple of "naughty slips" a few times (for not listening to her teachers) which also doesn't surprise me.  At least its not for biting another kid or throwing tantrums or something of that sort.  She doesn't seem to mind getting on "yellow", in fact, she acted quite proud of herself.  Silly girl.  I hope being in preschool will help her follow directions a little bit better.
The first month she wasn't allowed to play on the playground because of her heart procedure and that was hard for her.  When she was finally allowed to play, she made sure to tell me all about it! Elisa seems to really like her teachers and she talks the friends she has made in the class fairly often.  She's very hungry and tired after preschool, and if I don't feed her before running an errand, she turns into a monster!  But most of the time Elisa is very sweet and silly.  I'm so glad she gets her chance to be in preschool.  She's very social so she does very well in preschool! 

 

So darling!

 I didn't want to leave out the boy!

 

 

 Walking to class

 

 A little bit hesitant...

 

Elisa's "naughty slips"