Halloween Party

Last night we went to our first Halloween Party of the year at our friend’s Paul & Sara’s house.  It was great!  Of course, it was a Halloween Party for kids so all the kiddos were done by 9pm.  Gone are the days of the party starting at 9pm!  Nevertheless, we had a blast hanging with friends for a few hours and watching all of our BOYS play!

Interestingly enough, everyone has all boys.  Even Sara is expecting their second boy.  Crazy how that works.  And so refreshing because everyone is used to the same levels of activity, noise and climbing!  Jack was the oldest, the littlest baby was 7 months and the rest of the boys were 2 and 3.  They all got along so well too!

We all brought pumpkins to share so the boys could paint them.  This is the favorite Fall activity at our house.  We actually hadn’t done it yet this year, so Jack & G were very excited.  They love to paint in general, but painting pumpkins is the best!  It was so funny to watch all these active little boys sit down and quickly become completely involved in painting.  They really had fun and they are all so deliberate in their color choice and placement.  It always cracks me up!  As a side note, Oliver (the host of the kid party) is a few months older than G, totally adorable and VERY artistic.  Sara has a picture he painted on her refrigerator that is amazing.  It is of his family including a smaller stick figure for the baby brother that he is going to have soon.  The painting is so good that I had to ask Sara if Oliver did it and if someone helped him.  Nope, totally his creation and probably most impressive is that he realizes that his family is expanding to 4 in a few months.  Apparently, O is the artist in the making of the group!  So cool!!!

We also roasted marshmallows and made s’mores.  Yummy!  Sara had done such a good job planning things ahead of time that I was able to easily bring things for Jack.  The big Gluten Free excitement of the week was that I successfully made GF Graham Crackers.  They are good too!  Jack got to have s’mores for the first time!  Daddy helped the boys roast their marshmallows and get their s’mores ready.  Jackson the sweet tooth (like his Mama!) loved them.  Garrett, not so much.  G took one bite of the s’more and gave it back to Trav.  I think even the graham crackers were more than G really liked.  He is a chocolate boy though, so he kept carrying around little Hershey bars and asking to eat the candy.  It has been so long since I’ve made s’mores and they were soooo good!

The other boys wore their costumes.  I completely forgot our kid’s costumes!  Such a bummer.  The boys are going to be bumble bees.  Their costumes are pretty cute, so I’m bummed I forgot them.  The other kids looked very cute.  Their was Buzz Light Year, a dragon & a monkey.  I love kid Halloween costumes.  I’m getting excited for Trick or Treating!

Somehow I think we only got pictures of the pumpkin painting.  It is hectic with all the boys, so I’m going to use that as my excuse!!

Cox Farm, The Second Time Around

A few weeks ago Travis took the afternoon off and we attempted to take the boys to Cox Farm.  I have taken the boys every year since Jack was a year old with my usual Mommy group.  This year Trav saw a Groupon deal, so he snatched u 4 tickets for us to go as a family on a weekday afternoon.  There were limited days you could use the deal and of course it ended up raining on the day we were able to go.  It worked out fine.  The kids were able to show Trav around a bit, he was able to finally see what all the hub bub was about, we went through the corn maze which none of us had done before and we literally got rained out.  The end result was 4 rain checks to come back another day since they had to close the farm.

Since our first trip of the season was  a wash out and I could never miss an opportunity for a Fall playdate, today the boys and I met a few friends at Cox Farm.  Once again, it looked like the rain was going to win.  We fought a drizzle all the way there, but by the time we got the wagon out, redeemed our rain checks and got into the farm, the weather began to clear up.  In the end the day was beautiful!   The boys fed and attempted to pet the pigs.  They also attempted the rope swing.  It was hysterical.  None of them were probably big enough and certainly did not have the coordination to actually hold onto the swing and then drop into the pit.  They all fell flat on their face in some fashion.  But, they loved it and kept wanting to do it again!  All the kids had a blast in the “working farm” area where they could work a water pump to fill buckets or to run down a trough, fill buckets with corn using a conveyor belt (which I’m sure has some true technical name but I’m more of an alfalfa girl than corn) and crawl all over small tractors. 

 

 

One of the big attractions are all the slides.  A few were closed today due to the rain (and all were closed the day we went with Daddy) but we did ride the biggest slide.  It is a big racing slide where you sit on gunny sacks to go down.  Jack and his friend Jacob raced each other several times.  Poor Ian doesn’t love slides, so he really didn’t have any interest in going down the gigantic one.  Marcy and I took the little kids down with us.  The first time down I took Garrett and Isla with me.  G LOVED it!  Isla liked it too but she was in the very front so I’m sure she felt less secure even though I was holding her.  I love big slides, but I have to admit that I had a momentary flashback to my own childhood.  We went on vacation one time and went to some sort of park I think that had the same kind of racing slides, only instead of the slide being made of plastic they were aluminum.  So first off, they were pretty warm.  But then, they were REALLY fast.  This wasn’t a problem for most people, but I was maybe 6 and very small.  I went so fast that I flipped around backwards and totally lost control.  The slides were in need of repair and the aluminum pieces that covered the rivets were lifting up.  I got bounced around so much that by the time I got to the bottom I had scraped my entire body.  I was a bloody mess!  And the clincher of the whole thing was that everyone else was to afraid so I had gone first.  And then I got hurt, so nobody else went.  For a fleeting moment while sitting at the top of the slide, I wondered just how crazy of a Mom I was to ride a racing slide again with not only my own child but someone elses too?  Aahh, it was fine.  Nobody got hurt and it was a really fun slide!

We had to get back on the early side this afternoon, so we didn’t get to do everything we wanted.  We were having so much fun and didn’t want to leave.  I promised the boys that if the weather stays good, we will make it to Cox Farm one more time this season.  And aren’t they lucky, ’cause we still have to go get pumpkins!  It’s our Fall extravaganza!

First Church Choir Performance

P1000880, originally uploaded by mgianchetta.

This Fall our church started a more formal choir for 3 to 5 year olds called Cherub Choir. In the past the Cherub Choir sang at Christmas or sometimes other holidays but not often. The kids would practice a song at Sunday School the few weeks prior to the performance and that was it. Recently the program was expanded and now the Cherub Choir meets every Wednesday night for 45 minutes and then sings at Church about every 6 weeks or so. This past Sunday was the first performance and it was really cute.

Jack was excited to be in the choir. He loves to sing and the choir teacher is the same teacher the boys have at pre-school for choir. Since the choir is for 3 to 5 year olds, Garrett isn’t even close to old enough to participate. The first week we dropped Jack off for practice G wanted to go so badly. The teacher said he could stay but I felt bad because he was so young. The next week I was the parent volunteer so G had to stay. After class the teacher said that G really could stay and be in choir. She said he was her best student in the pre-school, he loved music and he always followed directions. So, after that G has stayed every week and participated in the choir.

Both boys love to sing! Cherub Choir has been great so far and we are looking forward to the next performance.