Halloween Highlights

This year for the first time ever, we grew some little pumpkins that were the perfect addition to our Halloween porch....

And the dollar store pulled through for us with some styrofoam tombstones and skeleton salad tongs that dressed up our front yard....

One night in October we were surprised by being "Boo-ed."  While this may be a common thing out in Utah, it's not something that ever happens here in PA, so we were shocked.  Come to find out it was the Young Women in our Ward, and we LOVED it, but had even more fun passing it on to some of our friends in our neighborhood while wearing Hogwarts robes and taking Uncle Kevin along for the ride...

At school Landon made the cutest little ghost garland.  I loved that he drew minion ghosts and Harry Potter Ghosts.  Too cute!

Pumpkin Carving

We popped over to Grandma and Grandpa Nelson's for our traditional pumpkin carving.  The boys had already carved pumpkins at the Cunningham's but they insisted they do it again with Grandma and Grandpa.  They had so many carving plans they needed to carve twice just to get them all in.  And Bridger's still complaining we never carved a Hedwig pumpkin so we still failed.  Haha!  Dean's the best carving helper around and I did my best to help too.  And this year Tanner and Landon did everything on their own which was awesome!  At the end of the night Grandma and Grandpa spoiled us with donuts, cider, hot chocolate, and chocolate milk.

Bridger and Charlotte's Birthday Bash

Since we were lucky enough to have Kevin, Helen, and Charlotte here just a few days before Bridger and Charlotte's birthdays we just couldn't resist having a little party for the two of them.  They both love "The Greatest Showman," so we did a circus theme.  We threw up a little circus tent, played a few games, and then ate ourselves sick with circus candy and treats.  Charlotte was so cute and wanted to dance to all the music with Bridger.   He happily obliged, but would stop every few minutes to tip his hat which had us all rolling.  Haha!  So grateful for these birthday twins and the chance to have them celebrate together this year.

 

 

Trunk or Treat 2018

This year's trunk or treat was a hit.  There were a TON of people there and since it was raining all day we ended up holding the whole thing inside.  We started things off by trick or treating through the halls, and then gathered for dinner in the cultural hall.  We had a soup pot-luck topped off with lots of desserts.  Dean ended up winning a prize for his awesome mechanical eye.  And some ward members surprised us with their costumes, especially Sister Smigelski in her little girl costume.  It was fun having Kevin, Helen, and Charlotte tag along and they fit in so well some people even thought they had moved here!  It was fun seeing everyone's reaction to our costumes for our big Harry Potter themed reveal.

 These guys were AMAZING with their costumes this year!  Char is the perfect Boo!

Landon's buddies Mia and Zoe

 Harry was slightly out of sorts, but some cheese balls did the trick to cheer him up after this picture was taken...

 Best costumes of the night in my opinion.  What a great YW's Presidency!

 The Allens...a.k.a. Trump and his security detail...plus a mermaid. 

 Can't get enough of the Bolingers.  We could have used the stay puffed marshmallow man last year!

 Sister Smigelski was on fire!

 Chip and Joanna (aka Mitchell and Sarah)

 The Bernards

 The Mitchells

Cunningham's Halloween Party 2018

Last year we had just met the Cunningham's when school started, and Halloween was our first time at their place.  Dean couldn't make it to their Halloween party that year, so I took the boys solo and we all had a blast.  This year when they invited us we had a million and one things going on the same day and time, but somehow the stars aligned and we worked out a way to go.  We had Kevin, Helen, and Charlotte in town, but they agreed to tag along and we had lots of fun despite some drizzl-y weather.  The boys got to carve pumpkins, golf into a pumpkin, ate and ate, and even played in the rain and mud.

 

Yurcina's Bulldogs

The 6th Graders at the Jr. High have a "Survivor" theme this year.  Each homeroom is a "tribe" and they earn points each week for different things to try and beat the other tribes.  They had the students each design a t-shirt and Tanner's ended up winning for his tribe.  He was pretty excited to have his work on a shirt for his whole class...

Red Ribbon Week

The boys always love a good excuse to dress up, and Red-Ribbon is just that.  This year they had crazy sock day, wear red day, favorite team day, pajama day, and wacky-tacky day.  It made for some crazy mornings scrambling to be ready in time, but it was worth all the fun.

Pumpkin Patch Take 2

Kevin and Helen came to visit the weekend following my parents visit.  It meant two straight weeks of partying around here.  Even though we'd been to the pumpkin patch the week before the boys really wanted to take Charlotte there too, so we did!  It drizzled a bit, but that meant crowds were low and it stayed warm enough we survived the drizzle.  The goats were especially friendly and this time we remembered LOTS of quarters to buy food for them.