It is hard to believe it is already November! October is always such a fun month. With pumpkin patch visits, awesome weather, all the beautiful colors and my personal favorite, Halloween! We also get to celebrate Aspen’s birthday in October which makes it even more fun!

 

We got around to carving our gigantic pumpkins! It definitely was no easy task. We had planned to do this outside but it was a rainy, windy mix outside so we went with plan B and moved to the living room. Odin wanted a traditional Jack-O-Lantern and Aspen wanted a cat. The kids helped me scoop out all the insides and collect the seeds.

 

We then washed the seeds and roasted them in the oven.  Such a simple, yummy snack! After washing the seeds, coat with olive oil/butter, season and roast in the over on wax paper at 300 degrees for 45-60 min. We did one batch of Himalayan pink salt + pepper and the other batch cinnamon + sugar + nutmeg.

 

The Trails (an outdoor mall) in Silverdale hosted a trick-or-treat event for kids during the morning/afternoon on Halloween. We took the kids up there as rain was in the forecast for later in the evening when we planned to be going around our neighborhood! October is the start of rainy season so no surprise there. My handsome fireman and beautiful butterfly had a blast! Odin wanted to rock the fireman again this year and Aspen decided on a butterfly! I snagged all our costumes for under $20 at Goodwill. Definitely the best place I have found for costumes. Such awesome deals and huge variety. Can’t beat the price for something they are literally going to wear once! I’m glad they both picked costumes that would be easy to layer. You just never know what kind of weather you are going to get on Halloween with the unpredictable weather October brings.

 

This was our first Halloween in our new neighborhood so we weren’t sure what to expect! We lit the pumpkins and had the candy ready to go by 5.  We got our first trick-or-treaters soon after that and it didn’t slow down. We ran out of candy at about 7:30 with lots of people still going through the neighborhood.

 

Thankfully the rain held off and we were able to go trick-or-treating around our neighborhood that evening! We left a bowl of candy on our step and went out with the kids. It was fun getting to meet more of our neighbors. Big bro showed Aspen the ropes. They were going from house to house like pros. Aspen didn’t understand the concept of ringing the doorbell when she could just yell “ding dong, ding dong” really loud and once kicked a door when they were taking too long to answer!

 

Mom and Dad even got into the dressing up this year! If you know Sam, he is usually not one to really care to celebrate holidays. Since our move, he has gotten WAY more into it. It makes my heart so happy to watch him get excited about holidays and put so much effort into making sure our kids have a great time! I love seeing him genuinely enjoying it. Makes for one happy wife and one happy life!

 

As much as I love taking my own kids trick-or-treating, it is still one of my favorite things to pass out candy! I love seeing all the different costumes that people come up with. It’s amazing the creativity and artistic ability some people have. We had some awesome costumes come to our door! My mask only scared a few kids, I was quick to take it off and wave with a big smile to ease those scared trick-or-treaters! After indulging in some of their candy Odin and Aspen came out to help me finish passing out candy. Those pumpkins were ridiculous to carve but they sure looked awesome all lit up outside our house!!

 

Halloween 2018 is a wrap!

I decided to try and tackle taking our own family photos this year! I really wanted to fit these in during October before winter starts. It was difficult getting 2 toddlers to cooperate at the same time but I am happy with the end result. I know what to do different next time so I will probably make another attempt in the future. Here are some of my favorites minus the ones I used for our Christmas card. Not bad for a mom with a Canon and a tripod!

 

So thankful to continue to see positive changes within our family from our decision to relocate!

 

On to the next adventure…