Trick or Treat!

After much anticipation, the day for trick or treating has come! Our Star Wars theme was quite a hit, but all the kids had great costumes and more importantly a lot of fun. 

Zombie softball player, Bucky from Captain America and two Darth Vaders.

Honing our light saber skills before we head out.

Gone are the days when Trace would refuse candy if he wasn't fond of what was presented for candy choices. He's good with whatever now, he just may not eat it when we get home. 

Recognize this house?

Kevin built a spider web for our big spider. Really cool!

While we headed out to gather all the candy in the neighborhood, Aunt Tamara, Uncle Adam and Brinkley came to our house to hand out candy to the youngins that came round our door. After we separated with Scott's family, we went around the neighborhood behind our house with Tamara and Adam, their costumes were a bit hit!

Pumpkin Carving

Time to carve the pumpkins! This year we had some given to us, some we bought from a patch and some we just picked up when grocery shopping. This year Trace said we all could carve it "however you want" as opposed to last year when he had specific requests as to what each pumpkin should be. 

Good to see he is still grossed out by the insides of a pumpkin. Ewww!

Left to Right; Frankinpumpkin, Vampire pumpkin and the word "Boo!"

Spooky!!

Carrell Family Halloween Party

Every year, Colleen invites over all the grandkids the Sunday before Halloween to see their costumes and celebrate the holiday together. This year, Trace and Boston were BOTH Darth Vader and so Kevin got a storm trooper outfit and I went as a woman Jedi. 

One of Trace's cousins as a Ninja Turtle and Trace in his Vader costume.

Preston brought over a book called "The book with no pictures". It has words on every page and they are simply hilarious when read by Preston to all the younger cousins! Everyone laughed so hard, even the grown-ups!

After the party, Grandma Carrell let all the kiddos pick a pumpkin from her garden to carve or paint. Trace had to pick just the right one!

Pumpkin patch

Kevin and I got word about a locally sponsored pumpkin patch and corn maze at nearby Wheeler Farm and decided to take Trace and see what it was all about.

His idea to lay in the coffin, not mine. 

I see you!

These bones were fake, but we had to take a minute to convince Trace of that.

He just couldn't get over the fact someone made "fake bones". What?!

"Be scary Trace...." said Mom

"This way Mom!"

They had an area that you could check out stuff in the barn. How were we to miss the huge tractor in the front?!

Checking out the "real" outhouse!

We made the selection of the perfect pumpkin and headed home. So much fun!

Camping Carrell Style

We'd been having so much fun this summer, we never got around to going camping. One weekend in October, we decided to invite Scott and his family to our house and we'd both set up tents in the backyard and have a good old fashioned camp out except without having to travel anywhere or pee in the woods. We had such a great time! We played board games and roasted s'mores over our fire pit. I even set up a scavenger hunt with bags with games, toys and treats in them for each kid. Such a fun night! After the sun went down the temperature cooled down to barely above freezing, but all the kids were real troopers and made it through the night. Next year we'll just have to do it a little earlier in the year. The next morning the kids had a blast playing outside on the swing set in their pajamas!