Painting Pumpkins

While the girls and I were at Rock Creek, I let them each pick out a couple tiny pumpkins and/or gourds.  We picked out a couple for Chris, too, and a few days later, we had a family pumpkin painting party. 

It was all fun and games until Elizabeth started painting her hands and face. Ha!

Emily with her two rainbow pumpkins and her baby blue pumpkin

Addie with one of her masterpieces

Chris's gourd and pumpkin

My sunset gourd with my little frog

Rock Creek Pumpkin Patch

My MOPS group met up at Rock Creek Farm in October. The kids had an awesome time sliding down a giant inflatable slide, bouncing around in a pumpkin, playing in a hay maze, petting animals, and posing for pictures for me. It was such a fun morning, and it really added to the pre-Halloween excitement in our house!

 

We got almost all the kids to sit still for this pic....

Elizabeth showed off her two-year-old stubbornness and refused to join  her friends for the picture

Scarecrow Emily and Jack-O-Lantern Addie

Scarecrow Addie and Jack-O-Lantern Elizabeth

Halloween Box and Fall Leaves

With October comes the unearthing of the Halloween Box....

A whole new giant box of toys

Em was so excited to find this bat and she named her Stellaluna and immediately began imaginary play with her.

Addie found the spiderman mask that had been missing from her spiderman costume. Woo Hoo!

Trying on the witch fingers

Addie has been wearing her Spiderman suit A LOT since August, and she's been brainstorming ways to incorporate Spiderman into her Halloween costume. 

At the end of August, her thought was a nice combo of two of her favorite characters to create....

Spidermanelsa

 

But then our neighbors gave us a fireman costume, and Spidermanelsa quickly morphed into Spidermanfireman

 

But then, when she found the mask in the Halloween box, she settled on just going all out Spiderman. I made her some shoe covers so she could have Spiderman feet, and she couldn't be more excited about being straight-up Spidey

Emily is going to be Anna from Frozen, and Elizabeth is going to be a monster, but she always clarifies to anyone who asks, that she will be a NICE monster. Not scawey.

Our neighbor has a great big maple tree in the front yard, and we just love making big piles with all their leaves. When the leaves first started changing color, the girls began begging for leaf piles, and a couple weeks ago, the leaves began to fall and the leaf play began.

And because I don't think I ever posted any fall leaves pictures last year, here they are!

Fall Leaves 2014

I just love this last one of a tiny Elizabeth, clutching her fall leaves. And the really funny thing is, two years before this one was taken, Addie was wearing the same dress in the leaves! Click here for a little flashback!

Beauty in the Sky

On October 11th, Emily looked outside and announced that we all needed to see the sunset. We sure did, it was absolutely amazing. The brightness of the colors mingled with the crisp fall air and the song of the crickets to create an absolutely magical landscape. While Chris and Elizabeth finished up dinner, the big girls humored me with some poses in front of this fantastic backdrop. Their smiles turned to total silliness which had us all belly-laughing. What joy!

PS, I named these photos October Sunset, and when uploading them to the blog, some year-old pictures popped up that had the exact same name. I looked those up and found that a year ago it was still Emily who brought our attention to the sky. Click here for a little flashback. 

Oh Emily!

Another lovely September evening...we were watering our newest tree (Scoomadon Chim Chom according to Addie, Little Tree according to Emily) and Em saw that running hose and just couldn't resist.

PS, if you'd like to hear the tree names, see below:

A Hike with Grandpa

We spent one of our days up at the Dome with Grandpa John, hiking among the mountain wildflowers. 

My little hair-twirler got her finger stuck on our drive up to Idaho Springs. I had to pull over at Genesee to help her out.

The dome, wildflowers, and my dad - hiking with Parkinsons. So much to be thankful for.

I couldn't stop looking at all the different colored flowers. My dad just kept pointing these little guys out. He seems to know the location of every little cactus on Mt. Pisgah.

Grandpa shares his water

Laughing with Grandpa

Life is Good.