Halloween 2010

    

     Hayden does not like to get messy, he never has, and he probably never will.  So when Halloween rolls around and the children want to carve pumpkins, he can hardly stand the idea of touching the guts of a pumpkin.  This year however, Michael forced him to pull out some of the guts on his own.  It was pretty hysterical to witness because he was freaking out about it.

     Sydney on the other hand has never had a problem with cleaning out her pumpkins and can often be seen up to her elbows in the goop.  She did an excellent job cleaning out and carving her pumpkin this year.  She knew exactly what she wanted to do and did it.

    

      Maura is more like her brother and not too convinced that pulling out pumpkin guts is something that she wants to add to her "to do" list.  She did a little of it, but became grossed out by the smell of her pumpkin and ran and hid in her room.  Apparently she is not a fan of the smell of squash.

     We were down to the wire though, it was Halloween and we only had an hour or two before dark, so Michael rallied the troops and got the 3 pumpkins finished and transformed into jack-o-lanterns.  We put them on the porch and lit the candles and handed out candy to the early trick-or-treaters, but then we went to our friend's home for dinner.  Halloween fell on the Sabbath this year, so no trick-or-treating for our family.  Instead, we enjoyed a trunk-or-treat at the church the Wednesday before.

     Here are the children with their friends finishing up dinner.  We had delicious chili and bread sticks.  Then we gathered in their front room and held a Halloween themed poetry reading.  It was a fun filled night and something that we will never forget.

Trunk-or-Treat

  

      The girls were very excited about Halloween this year.  Maura was determined to be a ladybug, and Sydney spent a long time pouring over the Party City circular until she determined that she wanted to be an "Indian Flower Princess."  Over course, her costume did not come with any shoes, and so she talked me into getting her some moccasins in addition to the costume.  In the end, they were both adorable.  Since Halloween fell on Sunday this year, we did our trick-or-treating early.  We met up with our fellow ward members and held a trunk-or-treat a few nights before.  The girls were so excited to go.

      Once the candy exchange was over outside, we headed inside to get warm and play some games.  Maura was not sure what to think about eating a donut hanging from a string.  She found out that it is much harder than she thought it would be though!  The donut just kept swinging around and even though she was not supposed to use her hands, she just could not help herself!  She had a much easier time at the cake walk and the thing that she enjoyed the most was having her face painted.  At first she had a ladybug painted on one cheek, but later, she went back and had a pumpkin painted on the other cheek.  She just loved knowing that those pretty pictures were on her face.  Maura also liked the fact that her two friends who live down the street came to the party.  She and I invited their family to come and we really enjoyed Heather and Carissa's company.  We have been blessed to have good neighbors and it was fun to introduce them to the idea of a trunk-or-treat.  All in all, we had a very fun-filled evening.

Making Applesauce

     Western New York is really into apples. They grow a lot of them and we found over 80 u-pick farms in our area that allow the general public to go and pick fresh produce through-out the season. We discovered an apple farm in October and drove up one Saturday afternoon.  Within a half hour the children picked about 50 pounds of apples- although it helped that some of these apples were almost 3 pounds each!  After making every apple recipe that I could find from fresh homemade muffins, to crumb cake to pie, we had to resort to applesauce to use all of the apples that we had picked.  It was a time-consuming process to locate all of our canning equipment in the moving boxes in our basement, but worth it in the end.  Michael and I made batch after batch of applesauce and stayed up until 2:00 a.m. or so on a weeknight, but we got it finished.  I love looking at the jars and jars of applesauce in my pantry.  This is a new annual tradition I think!  Now, if we could only get a salsa garden going again, but I don't know how to keep the deer and rabbits away.