Halloweens Past

Ghosts of Halloweens Past:

1998 My little stinker. Skunk Austin

1999 Bad parenting year. Lou and I were at a party so Mom took Austin to a few houses in her neighborhood. I'm pretty sure he was dressed as Po from Teletubbies that year...

2000 Pooh Bear

2001 Bob the Builder and a Bumble Bee


2002 Buzz and Woody


2003 Harry Potter and Norbert, the baby dragon


2004 Anakin, Santa, and Baby Bear




2005 I have no pictures from Halloween night - weird. I do have these that I got from our fall pictures of the knight costumes I made them and G in his dragon costume. They were really into theme dressing!




2006 Red Ranger of Gondor, Bald Eagle, and Harry Potter




He decided to wear his Pterodactyl costume that night instead.

2007 Ninja, Devil and Lion



I couldn't keep him out of his costume that year. He wore it for a week. Too cute!


2008 Frodo, Ninja and The Thing

Wheeler Pictures

And back at home...

Pumpkin Fun

Yesterday was such a fabulous day for me. After three weeks of living the single life, first alone in England and then here with kids, I finally had Lou back, my boys all healthy and an entire day with nothing to do. We had a nice late breakfast, watched some movies, ate a little lunch and then decided that some pumpkin carving was in order. Lou hasn't helped us in the past so I think it was an eye opener for him how much work, I mean, fun carving a pumpkin really is. Here are my silly guys with their pumpkins. Oh, and my cat pumpkin too. :o)



Step two of the pumpkin process is roasting the seeds. We had so many that I offered to make a couple of different kinds. Lou wanted just salt and I wanted to try something new... How about pumpkin spice? I tossed them with almond oil and then sprinkled on cinnamon sugar and a little nutmeg. Yum!



We ended the evening by taking supper to Mom and Dad's to celebrate Dad's birthday. We brought chicken and sides and Mom made some more sides and a cake. It was a nice little party for Dad on the day he wanted to forget. Heehee.

This morning I talked Lou into staying home one more day. He had been working thirteen hour days while he was gone and only had one day off the entire ten days. He needed at least the equivalent of one weekend before he went back. Since he agreed I wanted to make some blackberry pie, but found out that I had once again bought only ONE can of pie filling. Hmmm what to do? I searched my freezer and found... figs. Huh. Well after a bit of thinking I thawed one quart of figs, poured in my pie filling, added 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 tsp of almond extract and filled up my crust.



It tastes really good, but next time I will add a 1/4 cup of flour to thicken it so it isn't pie soup. I also found the time to make a menu for the week!

Menu of the week:

Wednesday
Cereal
Out to lunch for errand day
Asian Salmon, Salad, fried zucchini

Thursday
Quinoa
Spaghetti
Sweet & Sour Meatballs, Spaghetti squash, asparagus

Friday
Oatmeal
Sandwiches and chips
Chili and cookie bars

Saturday
Hobbit Brunch
Out before trick or treating

Sunday
Church
Out with Mom and Dad
Stuffed Potatoes

Monday
Cereal
Pumpkin Pancakes
Homemade Pizza

Tuesday
Beans and Toast
Tomato-basil soup and Grilled Cheese
15 Bean Soup

And finally, Pumpkins!

Today was supposed to be a down day. After big days on Wednesday and Thursday, Friday was going to be the nice quiet start to my weekend. That is until Thursday afternoon when I returned home to find a message from the dentist reminding me that we had a cleaning and a filling scheduled for today. Oops. Forgot about that one...

I decided to make a day of it. After Griffin's cleaning and Carson's fillings were done we headed to Chuck E Cheese's to play. I had giving them the choice of CEC or the Great Pumpkin Patch since CEC was cheaper and closer. They didn't fail me and chose the mouse! When we arrived there were FIVE buses parked out front so I ran in to see if they were coming or going. Going! Score! The guys played and had fun for a couple of hours while I played some Ski-ball and then read my book. It dawned on me that Reeve's Peach Farm used to have pumpkin patches and that last year they had trucked in some to sell. That was close and we could get pretty cheap ones with good selection. Nothing like a good place close to home! Guess what we saw when we pulled up?



Turns out that the drought last year had made planting a field of pumpkins a loosing proposition so they had just skipped it for the one year! At 39c a pound (you pick) it was a steal. The boys were SO excited that they got Chuck E AND pumpkins in a patch!





Here they are with the booty. This is the first year I didn't tell them that they had to carry them or pick something lighter. I've always felt kind of bad about that. If I had two kids I wouldn't do that, but three pumpkins means THREE trips back and forth and I'm just too lazy for that. Well, except for today. By the time I had all four pumpkins (Hey, I needed one too!) taken to the scales to pay and then back to the car, I was one sweaty, grumpy momma. Needless to say, there will be a return to the evil next year - if you can't carry it you can't have it. Now I'm too tired to carve them...

Huntsville Botanical Gardens

The last butterflies of the year.









Some of our favorite Scarecrows from the Scarecrow Trail.