Pumpkins and . . . Snow?

Happy Halloween Everyone!  The spooky festivities are underway here!  This week we carved our pumpkins and started making the trick-or-treat rounds! With LOTS of pumpkins this year - thanks to the always great prices at Anderson's - we did LOTS of carving, even some unconventional kind!  Once again Riley was a little cautious about sticking his hand into the pumpkin goo, but we finally convinced him it was ok and he could wash his hands afterwards.  Daddy went for the typical scary jack-o-lantern, and Mommy decided to try something new.  It started out as "etching" not carving all the way through, however, since she chose a white pumpkin (with thicker flesh) it wasn't working to were you could see the light through the flesh.  So she just ended up carving it like all the rest.  Jayce's resembles him slightly: happy 2-toothed grin, and then we also made some extras!

Mommy was really excited to try some "vampire" pumpkins, but her Favorite thing she saw was this baby pumpkin!! 

The one she originally picked out for herself to carve ended up being the perfect size to put Jayce in!  He didn't even seem to mind it too much and started trying to eat the pumpkin a little bit into the photoshoot.  But this was just too cute to pass up!

We had to bring all our pumpkins inside last Tuesday night so that we could carve them.  Otherwise it would have been very difficult to do.  See, that's because Northern Colorado got a HUGE snowstorm last Tuesday and Wednesday.  We got around 10 inches of snow, wet heavy snow.  It did a number on all the trees around here.  Thankfully none of ours were heavily damaged - the perk of having all saplings!  Our Aspen tree had a few broken branches, and we definitely won't be using our russian sage for "winter landscape" this year, but other than that we made it out nearly unscathed. 

It was Jayce's first time to "play" in the snow - and he wasn't too thrilled about it.  I tried to keep him contained Wed. morning so I could shovel some of the 9 inches off the driveway.  I put him in the sled, which was fine for a while.  Then he decided he wanted to climb out of sled.  That didn't go so well, considering the sled was "floating" on 9 inches of soft snow.  As soon as he put one hand down it plunged through and face-first he went into the snow!!! 

He was done after that!!  So back into the house we went.  We tried again later with better success.  Greg came over and the boys (well, mostly Daddy) made a snowman.  It was great snowman snow! 

The snow is already starting to melt away, but it sounds like we are supposed to get more again this week.  Two more storms are coming (wed. and Sat.) and those combined will give us more snow than this last one.  Guess it's time to buy some snowpants for the boys! 

Friday Night we had our first Halloween Outing.  It was Trunk-or-Treat at Cam's church so we had a good time dressing up and practicing our "trick-or-treats".  Riley got a lot of candy, and had a blast dancing to all the halloween music.  And Jayce the tiger won best costume for the 0-5 age group!  YAY!!  He did look SO ADORABLE!! 

Then yesterday we went trick-or-treating around Windsor businesses.  That was a little crowded, but still fun.  Jayce was matching Riley in his skeleton costume this time, and they looked so cute!  I may have to do matching or "themed" costumes more often - too cute!   Today we took a break from the Halloween activities, although we were planning to go to a carnival type event at Centerra.  But it's back at it again tomorrow for Trick-or-Treat in Old Town, and then the Real Trick-or-Treating around the neighborhood.  Hopefully Riley will let me paint on his skeleton face for those events!  So look for more pics next week!!! 

One more thing - Most of you have probably been watching Facebook, but I thought I would mention it anyways.  My Mom had major surgery last week and is in the hospital for a few weeks recovering.  Things went really well with the surgery, but she now has MRSA, a sometimes difficult to treat staph infection.  So she's in an isolated room - she can still have visitors, they just have to wear a robe and gloves.  But Recovery is long for her so it will be at least another week that she's in the hospital.  So please pray for her, and visit if you can, I know she gets bored easily in the hospital!  Thanks!  Have a Happy Halloween Everyone!!