October Overload

October has been overloaded with activities.  I love October.  I love Halloween and the fall and pretty much everything about it.  I am getting more tired as this pregnancy goes on and I'm trying not to do too much and to let myself slow down.  I'm not sure if I've been successful at that or not.  I do have this thought that keeps poking at me though and it's that very, very soon I won't be venturing out with the kids very much and when I do it won't be easy but will be much more stressful for me so even though I know I should be settling down at home as this pregnancy progresses, I just want to live all the moments up with the kids while I can.  

My friend invited us to go to Boo at the Zoo.  The last time we did Boo at the Zoo was when Isaac was just a few months old.  The boys are a little old for the Boo at the Zoo but Piper isn't so I thought we would join our friends this year. 

The other thing that I wanted to do this fall was have a party for Piper.  She gets ignored a lot with homeschool going on.  She joins us in things and I try to give her attention but she often just doesn't get as much from me as I'd like.  One thing I've always enjoyed with the boys is having preschool parties with their friends when I was doing the preschool co-ops.  She isn't doing preschool and there are not as many opportunities for her to have play dates because of homeschool so I wanted to invite her friends over for a little party.  I had very simple plans but the boys hijacked the party and things got more elaborate.  Will wanted to have a Halloween story time so we went to the library and got some Halloween books.  Eli wanted to make a Pin the Spider on the Web game so he and his brothers taped a spider web made out of streamers on the door and I helped them print off some spiders and find a blind fold.  They also wanted an obstacle course.  Their course included a beam that walked over a "snake pit."  They had boxes wrapped like mummies that the kids had to jump over and a big spider web with spiders stuck on it that the kids had to climb under.  The finally part of their obstacle course was popping a balloon with a bat drawn on it.  We had a simple "Build your own Monster" craft and cookies to decorate.  Piper had fun and even though I had to reign the boys and their ideas in, I am glad they wanted to be involved and help throw a fun party for Piper.

This year I told the kids I was tired of paying for costumes, especially when they wanted a different costume every year.  We told them they could have $10 to put together a costume and what they didn't use they could keep.  Will decided to come up with a One Man Piggy Back Ride, Isaac wanted to be a Pea Shooter from Plants vs. Zombies and Eli settled on being a zombie again.  Piper wanted to be a kitty cat.  I bought her the tail and ears and my friend gave us a leotard and tutu that Piper could have.  I also helped Isaac find some clothes and helped him paper mache his pea shooter hat.  Will needed help pinning all the clothes together and Eli needed help painting his face.  So, that was my contribution to their Halloween costumes.  

Will loves to carve pumpkins.  He is very much our tradition keeper.  He likes traditions and he likes to hold us to doing them each year.  I disappointed him this year and told him we weren't carving pumpkins.  It was too much work and too much of a mess for me this year.  Instead, we found faces we would have carved into our pumpkins and cut them out of wood on the laser.  Then we spray painted the wood and nailed them into the pumpkins.  The wood pieces were too big for the pumpkins so they looked kind of funny but at least they got to get pumpkins and pretend to have jack-o-lanterns.  They were disappointed that they couldn't put candles in the them but oh well, another year.

The LDS Homeschool group here in East Tennessee had a field trip today.  It was to the Echo Valley Pumpkin patch.  We went last year and the kids had a great time.  I almost didn't have us go but the cost wasn't too bad and I knew they'd have fun so we went.  They had such a great time that I finally had to pull the pregnancy card and tell them I needed to go home.  We got there at 10 and we left at 2 and they would have stayed as long as I let them.  They enjoyed the huge slides, the animals, the corn maze, choosing pumpkins, and most especially the zip line.  They made some new friends too so that made me happy.  Our homeschool group was giving the entire place to ourselves today for our field trip so it was great.  

All we have left is Halloween!