It's beginning to look a lot like...

Halloween! We decorated pumpkins the other day at our house, and an attempt to get pictures of both girls with the pumpkins went something like this...

Uh-oh, Anna's not having it! Let's try the table; maybe that will be fun for her...

Tyler steadies Anna, but Claire's getting tired of this...Let's see a pretty smile with teeth, Claire!



Okay, not bad, but how about Anna...

Anna's inner monologue: Seriously? You guys think this is what I look like?

And this one, from the next day at Mom's house, was just too funny...Tyler cannot STAND to be left out of any photo op...

Trunk or Treat

Tonight, we went to the Trunk or Treat and Carnival at 7th and Beech Church of Christ, which was a lot of fun. Here's Claire and Katelyn, who was an adorable butterfly.




I could not choose between these two pictures; both too cute!



She shoots, she SCORES! Aralyn (in the Cinderella dress to the left) and Jay were both coaching her along.

Bounce house, always a highlight. Claire discovered she could go down on her belly, and did that probably 20 times. Kate Albright, to the right on the slide, is in Claire's Thursday School class, and was Bob the Tomato.

Pumpkin Patch!

Holidays are when you really realize how much FUN it is to have a child! It's suddenly totally okay to be unabashedly thrilled over kids' Halloween costumes, getting free candy, playing cheesy carnival games, and going to an awesome place like a pumpkin patch!

Claire got to wear her Halloween costume four times this year, and we lost a crucial piece to it each time, so that by the end, she was fairly unrecognizable as Abby Cadabby. Her poof pigtails and wand both *poof* disappeared, so we had ourselves one very cute fairy or butterfly.

Since my last post, we've been to the Coleman Halloween Carnival--a total madhouse, definitely no photo ops there--Baker's Acres pumpkin patch in Tishomingo, and the 7th and Beech Trunk or Treat and Carnival (another post on that to come).

Mom, Tyler, Dani Rose, Molly, and Aunt Donola went with us this morning to the pumpkin patch, and it was surprisingly almost empty! We had every attraction almost completely to ourselves, including a private hayride! It was amazing! And this place had so much to do, as you will soon see.

Claire and Molly on the hayride.

This train cracks me up: it was plastic feed barrels with holes cut in the side, welded to wheels and a frame, and attached to a four-wheeler! The seats were 2 x 4 that the kids straddled, so ouch-ee-momma for the mommas who had to ride, like Dani!

Hay slide! Tyler is so good about helping Claire get along, and doing it as many times as she wants. Oh the perks of having older siblings, which we will very soon know!

Huge barrel full of corn, with lots of scoops and buckets to play with? Wow, what an easy, fun thing for little ones, right? Totally, until they get up, and fish HANDFULS of corn out of their underwear. Not surprising for Tyler, but Claire just sat down for a few minutes at the end! We had them throw their bobo corn onto the ground of course, but think of how many kids didn't!

Feeding the donkeys! There were buckets of feed for each set of animals just sitting in the middle of the barn with cups, so we could get as much corn or pellets or whatever as we wanted. The goats enjoyed this a little too much, of course. Enjoyed meaning butted each other out of the way to shove their noses into our cups. There were also bunnies, chickens, calves, and pigs. Seriously, I would have no chance to coo over these adorable--and if not adorable, then funny--animals if it weren't for Claire!

Tyler got into these duck races a little too much. You pump the water down this sawed-off PVC pipe so that a rubber ducky shoots down the stream and into a tub at the other end. Mom showed that we are definitely related when she bent over to pick up a duck and her sunglasses fell off her head and into the tank. Ha! So something I would do.

Neat little race track with pedal go-karts. Ty and Claire were not ready to stop, but for Mom's sake, we promised caramel apples and they hopped right off.

YUM!!