Happy Halloween

Our town does Trick or Treating on Thursday night instead of the 31st. I have no idea why. Paige was so excited to go. I've never seen her this excited for a holiday before. Christmas is going to be a blast this year. When I picked her up at school tonight around 5pm, she ran up to me then darted to grab her bag and coat and was at the door in about 5 seconds. I made a comment to her teacher that I've never seen her move so fast. The teacher told me she asked her earlier if the teacher could call me at work and tell me to go home and get her costume and bring it to school so she could get dressed there.

I took this picture this morning. We dressed them both in grey shirts and orange pants today. Completely unintentional.

We had a difficult time getting them to pose together in their costumes before we left:

She was much happier once she realized she was getting candy! I can't tell you how many times we'd be walking along and look in the stroller to see Brooke with a candy bar in her mouth...wrapper and all!

Recycling Crayons

It seems like our crayon stash has been multiplying. And one of Brooke's favorite games is to dump all the crayons (and everything else she can get into) all over the floor. After about the hundredth time of picking up all the little pieces of crayons that we store in a gallon size freezer bag I got to thinking maybe we should sort through them a bit. So Paige and I did a little crafty project. We picked out all the homely broken crayon pieces and peeled the wrapper off of them. Paige liked this part. Then we sorted the crayons by color and broke them into small pieces. Next I put them in a cute decorative cupcake pan. I put in the oven for about 20 minutes at 275 degrees until the crayons were all melted. Here's what they looked like when I pulled them out.

After they cooled I popped them out and we had pumpkin crayons! For most of them I mixed 2 or 3 colors of crayons together for a swirled end look.

I have other seasonal cupcake pans, so we may be doing this again in a few months!

Brooke School Pics

Below are Brooke's school pics. She was very unsure about the process. She had just gotten to school and I took her straight to the photographer. She didn't cry, but every time he was about to take the picture she'd flinch because of the flash and the clicking noise. He took a ton of pictures, but these were probably the only two where her eyes were actually open. He also managed to crop out the sippy cup that was in her other hand. She doesn't really have one specific "lovey" item that she keeps on her at all times, but she definitely does like to hang on to things for comfort.

Pumpkin Patch

This past weekend we went to Valewood Farms again for their pumpkin patch. This is the 3rd year in a row that we've gone. Follow these links to see the posts from 2008 and 2009. The kids really love the corn box, hay ride, animals and games they have. It's great for this age. Our first stop was the dairy store for ice cream. Brooke couldn't get enough of it! Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the cows. We got to see them up close on the hay ride and they had a calf in a fenced area that Paige reached through and pet!

 The new feature this year was the corn maze!

 The trees were so beautiful on the way home. It's such a nice drive this time of year.