Fall

October was a lot of fun for our family. Now that we've been back in Utah for 6 years and our kids are older (10 and 4) I feel like we finally have some set in stone traditions. Fall is a very exciting time for us as I try to stay out as much as possible to store as much sunshine and visuals of what the earth looks like alive before winter comes and kills everything. Okay fine, makes everything dormant. I know it's not quite fair to be so harsh to winter but lets face it, it's a time I get through more than enjoy. I am going to try to enjoy it more this year but that's for another post. Back to how I love fall. Anyway, every fall we enjoy going to the local pumpkin patch. It isn't huge but the proceeds go to a good cause and almost as good as that there are no stupid bounce houses, kids rides, or other money drainers. Just good old pumpkins, scarecrows, and hay bales. Carter ran around like a mad man trying to find just the right one for him. Katherine cautiously looked everything over and collected all the "baby pumpkins." We came home with lots of "babies."

We attended a production of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow put on by the Bluffdale Arts Advisory. It was such a terrific performance. Fold down chairs and a school auditorium but it was so well done! My favorite part was when the pumpkin head of the headless horseman was thrown and went rolling down the steps of the stage right to where we were sitting on the front row! My kids were screaming, matt and I were trying to not laugh too loud, and it was just so memorable. ;)

Every year we go to Barnyard Boo at Thanksgiving Point. There are cute halloween activities for the kiddos, nothing scary. We went to it right after we saw Frankenweenie. We can still make Carter cry by threatening to turn Bianca into a Biancaweenie when her time comes. Afterwards we got a funnel cake and corn on the cob. Perfect harvest kind of a day. Speaking of, Cornbelly's is another fun stop in fall. This is where we make up for going to a normal pumpkin patch. This place is crazy with haunted stuff yes we took the kids in the clown circus thing and yes they were both crying. We also took them in a hauntedish farm thing that was totally yucky. Oh well. On the lighter side we listened to the pumpkin princess tell a story and Katherine was quite in awe of her. We hit the corn maze which is always an adventure with our family ;) and had a deep fried twinkie. Good thing we had one then so they can remember they tried one before the Hostess company went out of business. We waited long enough in the season to go so the pumpkins were on sale for $3 no matter the size. I found the cutest warty pumpkin ever. I bought it and spray painted in silver and loved it until the day my friend Becky told me it was oozing from the bottom. :(

Carter was a spider exterminator for halloween. We love creatures but one had climbed on him during a math test and he had started screaming in front of the whole class. We thought a spider exterminator would be a funny way to turn that experience into a good laugh he could enjoy as well. Katherine was going to be cinderella until she tried on the dress and said it was too itchy and flatly refused to wear it. She ended up being Ariel...again. We had our traditions of pizza, roasted pumpkin seeds, and root beer with dry ice and apple cider to share with trick or treaters. This year I also made pumpkin soup. I was the only fan of it in the house though.