Act 5; Scene 14: Happy Halloween!!!

This week wraps up our final Spooktacular meal and Halloween festivities. 

On Wednesday, we had a more traditional-looking Halloween dinner:

Tomato basil soup with the last of our garden tomatoes

And pumpkin rolls!

Not actually pumpkin, but pumpkin shaped

And it was delicious! I forgot how good tomato basil soup can be. I'm glad we got to have it at least once this season! And the pumpkin rolls turned out pretty cute, too.

That night we carved our largest pumpkin into a Jack-o-Lantern.

 Thomas absolutely loved it. He was obsessed with getting the "yucky" stuff out of the pumpkin. He was saying "yucky" over and over again, until I started filming of course....he spent most of the time stirring up all of the juices inside the pumpkin.

I love the big stem!

That's a pretty happy guy sitting on our porch.

We're having a pretty chill Halloween. No carnivals, no fancy dinner--just trick-or-treating, and then a few friends coming over for about an hour to make Halloween pudding graveyards.

It should be really nice.

I'll update you this weekend.

And for now, Happy Haunting!

Act 5: Scene 13: Halloween Costume Reveal 2014

It's a little early, but since we had a costume party last night, we figured we'd better reveal before the word gets out!

Here are our Halloween costumes this year:

Tommy is Jaws, and we are his victims! (notice his severed hand...haha)

He was pretty stoked about his shark jacket. So stoked that it was very hard to get a picture of him!

And let me tell you, that jacket was a labor of love. I thought making that simple jacket would be so easy with the sewing machine. And it probably would have been if I was a bit more savvy about problem solving with the machine. BUT! 4 hours after starting the project, we finally completed it. And it's sure cute.

Our other labors of love were our wounds:

Robert's bloody gash got a lot of attention at the ward party

The shark got my arm!

The food coloring really worked well to die my shirt! I looked pretty bloody. Lots of kids at the party came up to us and asked to touch our blood--asked if it was real. Ha! Thanks to my stage makeup class at BYU and some extra fake blood I landed there, we looked pretty cool.

This is definitely the most gory costume I've ever had.

And! We won the family costume contest. Woohoo! Winning costume contests has to be one of my favorite things in life :-)

Us with our prize medals. And Tommy with his, like, 6th piece of candy in a row. 

Are you ready for Halloween?! Less than a week away!

Happy Haunting!

Act 5; Scene 12: A Very Halloweeny Day, and the Final Costume Hint!

To be honest, today was kind of crazy.

What with our own fall activities we wanted to do, as well as a lot of preparation for the ward party looming over us all in one day, we spent the entire day really Halloweening it up.

And now we're exhausted. 

So I'll save the details of the costume party for tomorrow's reveal post, and tonight we can focus on our trip to This is the Place Little Haunts.

Back in September I won a Facebook picture contest for This is the Place Heritage Park, and we got some free passes! We decided to use them today, for the parks Little Haunts children's Halloween festivities.

And we had a blast. I mean, that place is full of dirt, rocks, and sticks. Even without activities, the boys would have been happy! Here is a picture tour of some of our adventures:

Running up Main Street

...still running up Main Street

Great horned owl!

Stamping leather

Loves the hammer!

Our friends Bri and Gavin who came with us!

Waiting for a ride on the train

Trying out a bunk in the sea ship

Panning for gold!

He liked throwing the gold back to the river the best...

Chilling in the Navajo Hogan

That face!

And then that face!

Playing a Halloween song game

We had a good time. And, oh! I just found these pictures from when Tommy woke up from his nap and promptly put on my witch hat. It was pretty cute, even though he did not want to get a picture taken:

And this picture from yesterday's dinner that I should share: Monster Taco Salads!

Enough Halloween going on around here for you? Just wait until tomorrow's costume reveal from our costume party tonight!!! 

But for now, here is the FINAL HINT:

Costume Hint #5: Tommy is an aquatic creature, and we are not.

Any guesses?

Happy Haunting!

Act 5; Scene 11: Ghost and Jack-o-Lantern Pizza!!!! and another costume hint

It's about time for another Halloween meal, don't you think?

We thought so, too.

But it's been a bit crazy around here, what with my recent return from a whirlwind trip to New York City (post to come very soon about that). So we went with a ghoulish twist on a classic recipe at our house: homemade personal pizzas.

And boy, did we have fun.

Tommy loves playing in flour and eating pizza dough (yuck!)

Needless to say, our house was a huge disaster by the time these beauties came out of the oven--but it was totally worth it :-)

This one looks more like a clown...but we were trying to be healthy :-)

Thomas really loved that it was a ghost. He is making ghost sounds to his pizza in these pictures:

He didn't even eat half of this baby. He can eat the rest tomorrow.

Wow that was fun! And possibly the most work I've put into pizzas. 

After dinner I went to a Witch's Night Out at the library with my good friend, where I got a load of other easy, festive, and yummy food ideas. I can't wait to try some of them out in the next couple of weeks.

Here I am on my way to the library Witch's Night, and probably the least pregnant-looking picture I have. I guess I cast a spell on the camera or something!

I included this one so you can kind of see the spider ring on my finger

And now...time for another Halloween costume hint!!!!

Costume Hint #4: The injuries that are part of our costumes I mentioned in the last post are caused by Tommy's costume character.

Any guesses? 

Happy Haunting!

Act 5; Scene 10: Jaker's Jack-o-Lantern Pumpkin Patch

Today we drove down to Springville to check out a local pumpkin patch. We had heard they had fun activities for kids, and the best part...it was FREE!

And it was a BLAST! Thomas had so much fun, and so did we! 

Trying to coax Tommy into the little haunted tunnel. He did actually enjoy it.

Climbing the giant hay bale pyramid

Waving from the top of the pyramid

Coming down the tube slide

A partial view of the place/pumpkin patch from the top of the slides

Dad coming down the slide!

This was a GIANT pig

I found my car! This is Thomas attempting to put his thumbs up :-)

Our tractor driver was about 11 years old. (Truly)

This donkey was rolling the pumpkin along with his nose!

Possibly Tommy's favorite thing, the hay maze.

One of the many sad attempts to get a picture here...

On the way to pick out a pumpkin from the patch

Found a great one!

Just look at the colors on the mountain!

We had such a great morning. What a great find for free! (Well, not the pumpkins, but you know!)

Did you go to a fall fest this weekend?

Happy Haunting!