Happy Halloween!

Halloween was fun! Lance and Jude decided a month ago what they wanted to be so I had quite a bit of time to work on them. Of course, that meant I finished the costumes late the night before. Wee. 

All in all, they turned out cute! Jude wanted to be a pirate and luckily we found a perfect costume at Costco. Yay for not having to make it!

Is he not the cutest pirate you ever saw?

Originally Jude wanted to be a shark. Since he passed that up for a pirate, we made Cole a shark. I made this costume from a baseball hat and a pair of grey sweats. Yeah, it kinda looks like an angry dolphin, but you get the idea.

And Lance wanted to be a Minecraft Zombie. This was the one that kept me up late at night worrying I wasn't going to get it finished. It's make out of cardboard boxes that I re-sized in the proper proportions and then the "skin" was printed from a png file I found on the internet that George re-sized in Photoshop to fit the boxes I made.

Lance and I were both thrilled with the way it turned out!

Since I made the boy's costumes, I didn't have time to come up with ones for me and George, so we recycled the ones I made when I was pregnant with Cole. All I had to do was add a little pink bow to the baby and we were done!

The pirate captain fighting a zombie. :)

Can I just say UVa is awesome? Every year they do Trick or Treating on the Lawn. All the students that live in the apartments that line the Lawn are sponsored by different clubs and organizations from the University and they give out tons of candy to all the kids that come. It's always very crowded, so this year we tried to get a jump on the masses and left for the Lawn about 45 minutes early.

Waiting for the bus. This is always a highlight for the boys.

Cole thought the bus was great!

The Lawn with the Rotunda in the background.

Lance's costume was the biggest hit this year. Minecraft is huge with the tween/teen crowd and he found several people that had similar costumes and were excited to see a Zombie.

Since we arrived a little early, we had to wait in line before they started the Trick or Treating.

Another friend!

It got busy really fast! At every door the kids were probably at least 5 or 6 deep. Thank goodness Daddy was there to help.

Sneaking away to enjoy some candy...

Jude still seemed to miss the concept that if he just sticks it out a bit longer, he'd get more candy. He and Cole were content after just a few doors and wanted to sit and enjoy the spoils.

We convinced them to finish one side of the Lawn and then hopped on a bus back to the apartment. We had to hurry because we were meeting the Elmers that evening to do some Trick or Treating in their neighborhood!

Doing it in the dark was an exercise for me and George. Jude didn't understand the concept that he had to stay with the group and kept trying to run ahead to the next house. We actually lost him a couple times.

Cole thought it was great, but his short little legs had a hard time keeping up with the group.

And poor Lance got really frustrated with his costume. The boxes were not the best to run in and he kept falling behind the bigger kids.

(You can see how frustrated he his, and this was only the fourth or fifth house.)

We made it up the street with everyone, then I took Jude and Cole back to the Elmers while George and Aric took Lance, Killian and Kendall in the car to another part of the neighborhood to run around for the last little bit of the night. We ended up stripping Lance's costume and he did the last run in just his regular clothes.

It was a great night! We all had a good time and the kids came away with more candy than they could possible eat.

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkins!

Finally, a Halloween post! I'm a bit behind on our family journaling since all my free time has been spent sewing Christmas quilts for the boys boring little squares together. Here is a picture of one of the blocks I've done for Lance's:

When the projects are more complete, I'll post a picture of the progress, but for now, I'm frantically trying to find ways to work on it during waking hours without giving away the secret to the boys. I have to admit this project is taking me so much longer than I thought, but I'm learning so much along the way. 

Okay, pumpkins. We usually wait until October 30th to carve ours so that they still look good for Halloween. As you can see, I was still working on costumes:

Lance wanted to be a Minecraft Zombie and I was finally putting the "skins" on the costume. When am I going to learn to just buy these things??

We took advantage of the nice weather and carved our pumpkins outside. 

 Definitely loved being outside to do this. It cuts down on the mess and any seeds and pumpkin pieces we dropped got eaten almost immediately by the fat squirrels that are ubiquitous around UVa.

This year, Lance and Jude were determined to carve their pumpkins all by themselves.

 Cole was just pleased he had a lollipop. He didn't really care about the pumpkins and spent most of his time running around and playing on the playground.

 Guts. The best part!

 Still not sure what this pumpkin cutting is all about...

 George took over the "family" pumpkin with a little help from Jude.

 Concentrating...

My job was professional photographer and "gut scraper". 

Lance's finished product:

 Love it!

 (Don't you love the beard? I actually really like it.)

Jude insisted on carving his own pumpkin face without any help at all.

 Can you see the two eyes and the little mouth (that small circle on the bottom right)? He took the carver, stuck it into the pumpkin and swirled it around for a bit until he was satisfied. I asked him if he wanted me to help him make the holes a little bigger, but he declined. 

 And here's Cole's I carved for him. Sweet boy! I think he's saying "cheese" right here.

Our family of pumpkins!

I was slightly surprised that your could see the light through Jude's pumpkin, but it shone through just fine. 

Bring on Halloween!

A visit from Grandma and Grandpa

One Sunday in late October I got a surprise call from my mom. She and Glenn were coming to visit for the evening! Yes! We had been up in Northern Virginia lately but she was out of town when we visited so we were excited we got to see her, even if it was just a few hours. Lance was visiting his dad for the weekend, so he missed the visit. :(

She and Glenn brought these cute little tops for the boys from Ireland. Jude and Cole both thought they were great and it didn't take Jude long to figure out how to spin his really fast. 

 He and Grandma held several races to see who's top would spin the longest.

And of course Jude had to show Grandma his favorite game to play: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the Super Nintendo.

 Grandma was nice and played several levels with him. 

She and Glenn even got to meet Molty while they were here! Mom thought he was great and held him for at least 10 minutes. I was bummed Lance missed showing off his pet to his Grandma and Grandpa.

 Glenn wasn't as thrilled to see the snake, but was a good sport about it.

George made it home from work in time to have dinner with us before Mom and Glenn had to get on the road back home. Thank you, Mom and Glenn, for taking the time to drive down to visit us. We loved it!