Trick or Treat

Pumpkin Carving 2012

Miles wasn't sure he wanted to clean out his pumpkin himself, but I reminded him how much fun he had cleaning it out last year so he gave it a try and decided it wasn't too bad after all.  We saved a few seeds to plant in the spring to see if we can grow our own pumpkins next year.

We decided to try out some patterns this year instead of making the traditional jack-o-lantern face.  Miles picked out a bat and Leah picked out a witch.  I have to admit the little pumpkin carving saws work much better than the kitchen knives I usually use.

Since Leah's pumpkin from the pumpkin patch was too little to carve, I picked out another one at the store to carving her witch into and we made her little pumpkin into a witch too.

 I think they were both happy with the results of their hard work.

Here is how they looked all carved up.  They turned out really neat.  Even Clay was impressed with my carving the kids' carving skills.

 Back in the spring, we decided to plant some carrots in our backyard.  We watered them for a few weeks, but we could never keep the soil wet enough for them to sprout so we finally gave up.  Fast forward to September when we finally decided to pull all the weeds in our yard so we could walk through it again.  While pulling weeds, I found some plants that looked suspiciously like carrots.  They just happened to be in the same area we had planted our seeds too.  I guess during the monsoons those seeds finally sprouted and grew on their own with all the rain.  We left them in the ground and I kept watering them to see if they might grow a little longer.  Last week we finally decided to dig them up and see what we ended up with.  They were small, but they were definitely carrots.  They just needed a few more warm weeks to get to a good size I think.  We cooked them up and ate them anyway, but first we took a picture of our harvest.  That makes 5 strawberries, 3 tomatoes, and a handful of carrots for our first years harvest. 

 Our neighbor offered us his lawnmower to use if Clay could get it running again.  Of course Mr. Fix-it had that thing up and running the first day.  We let the kids take a spin around on it with Daddy.  I thought Miles would be in heaven, but he wasn't too sure about all the bumps.

 We went over to our friends' neighborhood to go trick or treating this year.  Miles made a handsome little Batman, even though we forgot his tool belt.  Oops. 

 Leah was a cute little ladybug.  She was actually 1 of 4 ladybugs at her school.  She insisted on wearing two skirts since one skirt had spots and the other one was nice and fluffy.  We only went to about 20 houses, but every house gave them a nice big handful of candy so they still ended up with quite a haul.

 

 Our friend Linus was a robot.  His mom worked many hours on his costume and it turned out super cute.  He even had LED lights on it. 

The kids are now enjoying all their treats.  I caught Leah sneaking a treat out of her basket every time I turned around yesterday.  It's a good thing they both had their dentist appointments before Halloween!