1 little, 2 little, 3 little pumpkins!

We took advantage of a beautiful Saturday afternoon to carve our pumpkin outside! Not only fun, but a whole lot easier on Mama for cleaning. And the past few years this fun activity has only held Meredith's attention for a bit, so I also broke out the paints so the girls could paint some of their little pumpkins.

When I offered to let everyone feel the insides of the pumpkin, Meredith of course was grossed out! Jillian was happy to touch it even though it was "icky"
Dual activities seemed to work - maybe next year I will try to be in their general vicinity so they can actually experience what I am doing a little! :)
Meredith's finished "Rainbow" pumpkin
Our finished pumpkins! Meredith insisted we make a Strawberry Shortcake pumpkin, which I was stumped by. Then she remembered that she has an Ariel costume set for a dog she made at a Build-a-bear party that came with a bright red wig that looks just like her Strawberry Shortcake wig, and voila - Strawberry Shortcake in pumpkin form!

Then it was so pretty that we decided to ride bikes for a bit!

Testing out big sister's ride and very happy about it!

Merrryhill Halloween Carnival

Every year we head out to my mom's school the Saturday before Halloween in costumes for some fun games and getting to see her co-workers.

Custard the Kitty, loved carrying around her bucket - and then loved it even more when we added candy to it!
There were lots of fun games that Meredith loved to play. Jillian humored us and played them at the first few games, then just stated going straight for the candy prize stashes.


Sweet Strawberry Shortcake. She loved this costume from the start and insisted she have the "hair" too. She is also really into her God-given freckles, but really wanted hers to be bigger to look just like Strawberry Shortcake. The necklace that she has on is actually a name badge Neal got from a work event he went to earlier in the week, but she really thought it added to her costume!
I liked the idea of the girls costumes coordinating, so I toyed with finding Jillian another Strawberry Shortcake character to be, but then decided on Custard, her pet kitty. I found this costume online, and showed Jillian a picture of it - she immediately started laughing at the baby in the picture and meowing at her, so I was sold! She loved wearing it and the best part was she would walk around meowing and petting her own head! We did add a green collar to make her more Custard-esque!
Fishing for prizes
And a bean bag toss
Daddy and Meredith played the wrap the mummy game - Daddy definitely got into it!
Strawberry and the Mummy
Time to bowl
Deep in concentration so she could win her tricycle race
Meredith was really excited to get a baseball painted on her face. We tried to talk Jillian into a little face painting too, but she as just wanting to stick to her candy!
Landon got to come meet us too, what fun to see him so much!
This was Jillian's favorite activity of the carnival - just sorting her candy and occasionally sneaking a sucker
Inspecting the loot!

Grapevine Halloween

So after premiering our costumes (Strawberry Shortcake and her pet kitty, Custard) on Monday at our Playgroup's Halloween party (where I forgot my camera!) we decided to give our costumes another wearing at the Grapevine Main Street Halloween festival with Uncle Neil, Aunt Katie, and Landon. Meredith was especially excited to see Landon, the spider, but was confused as to how he could be a spider since he doesn't have 8 legs...luckily his costume had some extras to make up for the ones he was missing!

Meredith was super excited to see the bounce house that they played in - can you tell?
There was trick-or-treating at the stores along Main Street but there were massive lines. Luckily there were a couple of stores away from the lines where we got a couple of pieces, including a sucker for Jillian. Sadly, she dropped it before finishing. So all she would do was do her sign language for "more" over and over! We finally snuck in somewhere else to get the poor little kitty another sucker.
When Strawberry Shortcake's hair got a little too itchy, Daddy offered to hold it and then decided to try it on.
Before we headed home, we took a ride on a little train, which was a big hit for all the kids!

Cookie Time!

To ease into the sugar-overload that is Halloween, Meredith was insistent that we make chocolate chip cookies last week. We carved out some time on Friday morning to start up the baking! All was going really well until I tried to "help" Meredith use our cookie-dough baller-thing...that is when I pinched her finger in the spring and poor Meredith was out of commission. She sat on the couch telling me that she wouldn't be able to go to a Halloween carnival the next day, even! To cheer her up a bit, I introduced her to the awesomeness that is cookie dough. I typically wait until she is out of the room to sneak some dough for me since it isn't the best thing for you, but since I felt a tad guilty for the injury, I decided to let her in on the secret! Since then, she has shown everyone we have seen her "bleed" (including lots of the people we trick-or-treated, a minister or two at church, her music teacher in the hall this morning, and on and on...)

My baking helpers, complete with aprons from Aunt Sandy!
Stirring up all the ingredients.
Jillian's turn!
Looks like Jillian approves of the final product!