Changing It Up

Lots of things are changing these days: the leaves, the temperature, the time, Jill's Halloween costumes...you know, the usual stuff.  It must be Fall!

And of course, with Fall comes pumpkins.  This year, Danny tricked me into buying mini-pumpkins from the grocery store...he was too cute to say no.

But we also got big pumpkins to carve.  It's becoming something of a tradition for Daddy to get a huge pumpkin and for Mommy to get a weird, white pumpkin.  And this year, I'd say our pumpkin design choices really reflected our personalities.  

Let's do this.

Which one is the pumpkin?

Aaron insisted on doing (some of) his own carving.  My heart was in my throat the entire time.

We scooped out the seeds and roasted them with butter and salt.  Yummm.

Jill chose a design with two kitties, obviously.

Aaron chose pikachu, obviously.

I had to make a political statement, obviously.

Chris paid homage to the NBA, obviously.

And Danny was a goof, obviously.

Lighting up the neighborhood.

Halloween is a month-long celebration in Chicago, so we had many opportunities to design and wear costumes, and collect tons of candy.  This year, Aaron took a crack at making his own costume:

It was an orange and red dinosaur (because we ran out of other colors of construction paper)

It was even one-size-fits-all!

But ultimately we decided that construction paper might not be strong enough to make it through all of the trick-or-treating that needed to be done.  So we came up with other ideas.

Some of them were better than others.

Some were downright inappropriate (why do we even have diapers anymore??).

Aaron ultimately settled on being Iron Man.  When Danny heard that, he announced he would be Captain America.  Then I turned to Jill.  "I want to be a bat!" she said.  "You mean batgirl?"  I asked, assuming she wanted to join in the superhero theme.  "Nope, just a bat."  As usual, my girl refuses to be usual.

Iron Man and a bat, before their school Halloween party.

Captain America came later after he woke up from a nap.

The next time we ventured to a Halloween event, Jill traded in the bat costume and went retro -- back to her preschool dalmatian costume.  Clearly, she'd grown a few inches since the last time she wore it!

This event was on Roscoe and we didn't realize until we got there that the stores were setting out candy for trick-or-treating.  Luckily, I had two extra ziplock bags in my backpack, and Danny just collected candy in his shield.  We like to keep Halloween classy.

Rock painting.

Celebrity sighting.

The next event was a "pumpkin party" at Wrigley Field.  This time, Jill traded in her spots for an Elsa gown.

They're all super in my book.

Another celebrity sighting.

Now that's a big pile of pumpkins.

When we went trick-or-treating on Southport, Jill was just getting out of ballet class.  So she decided to just add wings and go as a ballerina butterfly.

Aaron is really getting those Iron Man poses down.

Trick or treat!

Captain America just wanted to sit in the wagon and eat all his candy.

Finally, on the actual day of Halloween, Jill decided to switch it up one last time and be Anna for her school party.  

We finally get to see Iron Man's secret identity since masks weren't allowed until the class party.

Party animals.

Along the way, there was lots of time spent with friends, which is really one of the best parts of Halloween.  Well, that and the candy.

And the kids weren't the only ones who got to have fun.  Mom and Dad actually got to go to a Halloween party too.  We went as aliens from Avatar, and Dad really went all in, painting his face blue and wearing skin-tight spandex and a wig.  

Kids, if your Dad wasn't so committed to good Halloween costumes, you might not be here.

But it wasn't all Halloween-related.  We also made sure to find time for some of our other favorite Fall activities, like visiting the farm and picking apples at County Line Orchard:

He makes a bee-line for this tractor every year!

Feeding the farm animals.

A snake on one cheek and a cupcake on the other side, because she is simultaneously smart/sneaky and sweet/yummy.  And both of them were pink.  I'd say she chose perfectly.

Making their way through the maze.

Peter peter pumpkin eater!

Waiting in line for the moo-choo train.

Now they're big enough that we don't even have to ride with them!

The wagon rides to and from the apple orchard were an adventure in themselves.

Sweet as apple pie.

My failed attempt at a Christmas card-worthy picture.

Oh well, the apples sure were tasty!

Of course we also had to visit the pumpkin patch and sunflower field.

Son-flower (see what I did there?)

My ray of son-shine (ok I'll stop)

Photo op.

How much longer will the kids agree to do things like this?

We tried some new things this year too, like the Midnight Circus.  I'd never heard of it before, but a group of friends invited us to tag along and it was amazing !  The kids were absolutely mesmerized.  Ok we all were.

Fall is my favorite season, so I'm always a little sad when Halloween ends because it means winter is around the corner.  Right away on November 1st, the stores started putting out their Christmas decorations.  But we're not quite ready for jingle bells just yet.  We'll hang on to Fall as long as we can, and maybe even pull our costumes back out every once in a while, just for fun...

Because if this isn't fun, I don't know what is!