He Is His Father's Child...

This has Ben written all over it.

This is Logan's dinner-time box (a recommendation from Linc's PEIP worker - they're just toys the boys play side-by-side with, and they only get them while I'm making dinner).
Ben walked in the room to find Logan not only cleaning up the boxes, but he wouldn't stop until they were completely organized and color coded.

I can't deny this does give me an itch to get up and start organizing :)

And as soon as I can choose some of my favorites (because I can't post all 83 on here) I'll post our family photos and also some pics of our new roof! Wahoo!

Halloween

We try to make the month of October fun around here, filled with fun and spooky window clings, a basket full of Halloween books that come out only for the month of October, a few Halloween movies, lots of candy corn eating and plenty of Halloween songs at nap and bed time. And this year there was a lot of "Arrrgghh Matey!" and "Yo-ho! Yo-ho! A pirate's life for me" going on.

(Except it sounded more like "Ho-ho, Ho-ho! A pirate's life for me" ha ha.)

Logan decided fairly early on that he wanted to be a pirate for Halloween this year. I was thrilled when I went to DI one day at the beginning of October and found both a piratey shirt and pants for Logan in one shot. Beautiful!
The shirt just needed a little altering - no biggy. I made a little vest out of left over black felt, tore a rectangle from left over red fabric, snagged a pirate hat at a party store, found a gun and do-rag at the dollar store. I made a gun sling for him from left over fabric and heaven knows those boots are glued to his feet already. Voila, one crazed pirate ready for his preschool Halloween par-tay.
Oh, and the bag. He kept requesting a loot bag with skull and crossbones on it and I couldn't resist making one. And the patch has been hanging around ever since Monkey lost his eyeball.

And Lincoln. Well, he just didn't even have a say in his costume. When I saw a photo of a little candy corn costume a year ago I knew that's what Linc would be this year. His costume was a bit trickier, but not bad. I just got some yellow, orange and white fleece at JoAnns and created a little pull-over for him with matching pants. And I couldn't resist a little matching bag for him too.

On Saturday before Halloween we went to Gardner Village to hunt for witches (this is our tradition every year)

(we found a live witch wandering around and Logan was TERRIFIED of her - ha ha)

according to Logan the best part about being a pirate is having a gun
Lincoln is obsessed with dogs and cats

gobbling up their cookies from the bakery (prize for doing their witch scavenger hunt)

Then Halloween. One of our favorite days of the year!
Started the day out with pumpkin pancakes with chocolate chip faces, of course.

Logan had a Halloween party at preschool and came home with a brown bag full of loot.
After preschool the boys went trick-or-treating at Ben's work.

Then for dinner we had mummy dogs, banana ghosts, cheesy worm skins, vampire mouth apple and vampire blood jello.

And that night our ward had a quick trunk-or-treat. Lincoln caught on quickly :)

And then I took the boys to a few select homes in the ward - Logan LOVED this part of knocking on the doors and didn't want to stop.

Trick-or-treating at Grandma Kaye's
Almost everything in Lincoln's bag was half gnawed on because every time something new got put in his bag he'd fish it out right away and shove it in his mouth, wrapper and all. :)

The day was wonderfully magic and fun for the boys and Lo's already planning for next year.

Leading Up To Halloween

We love Halloween at our house. It's one of our favorite holidays of the year and we love having Halloween traditions. Here are some things we did this year to gear up for Halloween.

Logan took his first field trip with his preschool to the Vineyard Pumpkin Land. He was SO excited all month long for this field trip. He had so much fun with his buddies looking at pumpkins in the patch, looking for ghosts, witches, "square crows" and all things spooky and playing in their play ground.

I was in charge of watching Logan and Tobias.

This little climb on jungle gym thing was by far the favorite of the kiddos since they could climb on, around, under and through all of it.

and lastly they got to pick out a pumpkin to take home

It was funny to see all the kids struggling to hold up all the pumpkins they got to show them in the picture.

Earlier in the month we actually went to this same Vineyard Gardens to pick out our pumpkins for the season.

Linco loved the wagon ride

there were way too many pumpkins to choose from

the boys (big boy included) had so much fun trying to roll all the HUGE pumpkins over

The weekend of Halloween we decorated their pumpkins with cute little push-in face parts. Wonderful!

Linc didn't really love this part. He actually didn't want to have anything to do with his pumpkin. See? The pumpkin is air born here because he kept throwing it and rolling it away from him.
Logan, on the other hand, is completely proud of his creation.

After Lincoln went to bed Logan got down and dirty and carved his second pumpkin with Ben.

And last but not least we made Halloween cupcakes using pumpkin picks that I found at the dollar store - wonderful!

Logan sprinkled and poked all of cupcakes himself and licked plenty of fingers along the way. Don't worry, he also washed his hands plenty too :)