Halloween
We might as well start with the most fun part of the month - Halloween! Between our church trunk-or-treat, costumes for school, and actual trick-or-treating on Halloween we had quite the time dressing up. We did not buy any new costumes this year, but somehow we still had a plethora of choices. Yay for dress-ups! Between all the events we had an Oompa-Loompa, Willy Wonka, the blueberry girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a Rooster, a Unicorn, a blue fairy, Rapunzel, a bumble bee, several witches and the Little Mermaid. Macy particularly loved trick-or-treating and wants to go every day now. The funny part is she doesn't particularly like most of the candy (she will take one bite and then be done), but she loved running around the neighborhood and keeping up with the big kids. She had the most stamina compared to any of our other kids when they were two.
Macy - 2020 Lexi - 2014
Macy lived in her little witch costume for the entire month of October.
Pumpkin carving this year was much less stressful and more successful than in years past. The kids always love it and were pretty pleased with how their pumpkins turned out.
The kids' favorite Halloween decoration is a spider that we hang in the doorway and it drops down to scare you when there's a loud noise. They would lay under the spider and yell, "Boo!" as loud as they could, then watch it drop and go back up. As soon as it had rewound they would do it all over again. Hours of entertainment!
Monster Cookies with Grandma and Grandpa
Another fun Halloween tradition is making "Monster Cookies" with Grandma and Grandpa. The kids absolutely love piling on all the candy toppings to create the funniest monsters.
They even got to watch a movie in Grandma and Grandpa's bed when they were done with cookies. Not pictured is Grandma and Mac who piled on as well.
Pumpkin Patch
We visited a pumpkin patch earlier in the month as well. It was a beautiful day and the kids had a blast feeding the animals, going down the giant slides, bouncing on the inflatables, taking a hay ride, and playing all the fun games and activities they had around.
Garden of the Gods Rock Climbing
Grandma and Grandpa took the kids to climb on the rocks at Garden of the Gods on a day I wasn't feeling so well and they needed to get out of the house. They had a blast!
Paint Mines
We also visited the Calhan Paint Mines on a day that the kids didn't have school. Cole particularly loves hiking around all the cool formations.
Swim Meet
Cole and Lexi had their first swim meet of the season (and probably their last for a while) in October. It was with only one other team and severely modified to comply with COVID restrictions. Lexi kept saying that she felt really sick but swam her two events and afterward felt much better. I think she was just nervous and had butterflies in her stomach! She did great. Cole doesn't know what it means to be nervous for anything and did great too.
October Fun
Other fun things we did in October included family walks/bike rides to fee the ducks, puzzles with Grandpa during General Conference, and lots of reading with Macy.
Dad and Dave finished getting the solar panels up on Mom and Dad's house before it got too cold.
The kids got out an old photo album and loved looking through it at all of the fun memories they had forgotten about. The only problem with this is Macy decided that she wanted to go and do all of the fun things in the pictures right now. There were many temper tantrums over old pictures...
Macy somehow got the cold soar virus and had some pretty bad sores in her mouth for about a week. During that time she would not eat or drink much of anything and there was a lot of electronics and snuggling in her blankets.
This was the night that we knew she was getting better. She had her tablet on, snuggling in Mom and Dad's bed late, eating apples and peanut butter and pretzels. Isn't she adorable?!
Lexi came home from school with this essay she had written. Does it surprise you that my darling seven-year-old wants to be seventeen?!
Cole also came home with this essay. Does it surprise you that his favorite part of his body is his tongue?! This kid cracks me up.
