This year for Halloween we decorated our front yard, carved pumpkins, and did some trick-or-treating and a movie night with the cousins. A local Baptist church sold pumpkins for a fundraiser, and that's where ours came from. The pumpkin Addison chose was impossible to carve. It was like a rock! So it's gracing our porch through the month of November, too. We did a quick Walmart run to find one he could actually carve. Emmie's pumpkin didn't take long to paint, so she got to have doughnuts and apple cider before anyone else. A lady in our neighborhood invited us to come preview the spooky backyard she'd prepared for her grandkids. Decorations, actors, treats, even the Great Hall of Hogwarts where all the kids got to be sorted into houses! It was such a treat! The weather was perfect for trick-or-treating! We had the Aarons over for a quick dinner and then hit the streets for some selective trick-or-treating. We wanted to avoid going to every house in the universe, be...

Here's a little sampler of the Halloween fun for this year.  We made witch hat cookies and went "booing." We carved pumpkins. The kids each designed their own. Emmie mainly just wrote all over herself with a magic marker. Bryn's spooky owl. Addison's Minecraft jack-o-lantern. Very clever.   Asa's is a classic. It's half saying "boo," and half smiling. And Leah's cat. They were cool-looking on our porch!  We went to the Treehouse Museum's Walk in the Woods program. It was loads of fun and completely free since we're members! Then it snowed and got ridiculously cold out of nowhere.  So we baked! A new sugar cookie recipe for our jack-o-lantern cookies this year.  Emmie liked the frosting more than the cookie. Bryn went for both.   We made a huge pot of soup and took a neighbor to the trunk or treat at church. Nate was a biker dude. Emmie ...