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As usual, Halloween was even more fun this year. Samantha ran up to each door with great gusto and yelled as loud as she could “Trick or Treat!” Unfortunately, she never rang the doorbell first. When the door was finally opened, she forgot her manners when a bowl of candy was in front of her! Ellie rode on Daddy’s shoulders, so didn’t get into it a lot and was still tuckered out by the end of the night. It was also Brian’s first time at true Trick or Treating and I think he enjoyed it too!

Samantha painted a pumpkin again this year, and it looks almost exactly like last year’s.

And as usual, I carved my pumpkin.

And our little ghouls were Wonder Woman and a lady bug.

Naturally, we headed down to the Grand Ole Pumpkin Patch this year for some pumpkin patch fun. It took longer to get down there than expected, so our actual time at the patch was a little short. But, we still had a great time scouting out our pumpkins. Samantha and I walked the whole place looking for the perfect pumpkin, while Ellie was content with a graham cracker in her hand.

Hm. Which one?

(This was originally posted a while ago, but got partially lost in the hard drive crash.  I’m just getting around to fixing and reposting.)

My granddad’s 80th birthday party was at the Lake this year.  It was lots of food, family, and great weather.  Even though the day started out with a major mishap involving a blueberry pie, I think all the evidence has been cleaned up by now.

And check out this great picture from Lizzie’s blog.  Boy, Sam sure does love pumpkins.  I guess it’s good that she’s an October baby.

We headed down to the Pumpkin Patch on Saturday.  What a beautiful day!  It got rather warm if you were in the sun, but that was remedied by a cold treat in the shade.

Samantha wasn’t thrilled to go on a hayride, but you have to to get back to the big pumpkin fields. (We were towed by a big noisy tractor!)

Ellie didn’t seem to mind.

Once we got there, Sam was in search for a little pumpkin. I think she was trying to find one that she could carry because she would pick one up randomly then decide it was too big or too heavy! We got the smallest one that we could find, but it’s still a mostly normal size pumpkin. I guess she was thinking she could find something like we have as decorations all over the house.

(Brian, why didn’t you tell me that Ellie had a tail?!  I would have fixed that!)

We skipped out on the hay maze, but maybe we’ll try it next year.  This was the first year we tried the jumpy things.  I knew she would have a blast. She mostly played in the big pumpkin, but went down the Sabertooth Tiger slide once!

Samantha and I had shaved ice as a treat.  Hers was blueberry and bright blue!  Here she is trying to do “silly eyes.”

(Ellie isn’t doing it right either…)

We had a great time.  We saw several families that we knew, so I guess it was the weekend for picking out your pumpkin!  Now it’s time to research how I’m going to carve my pumpkin.

I carved my pumpkin the day before Halloween. I think it turned out pretty good and I got lots of compliments from the parents as kids came to trick-or-treat at our house.