The Sweet Life: Our October

Man alive, do we love fall around here! I mean we LOVE it! As soon as October hits, I bust out the pumpkin recipes (pumpkin muffins, pumpkin soup, here is a link to the BEST pumpkin waffles ever!). Gracie couldn't get enough of walks through the neighborhood to look for fall leaves, and even Connor wanted to collect as many leaves as he could too.

We kicked off October and specific Halloween-themed activities by going on a Halloween river cruise down the Provo River. This ended up being an interesting experience, to say the least. We went to dinner at Los Hermanos and headed on over there. We got there early so there wasn't much of a wait and waited about 20 minutes before our group was ready to go. Not 10 seconds after our boat launches, Grace tells me, panicked, "Mom, I have to go potty!" My first reaction is that really she just is a little scared of the boat ride (after all, we'd had her go to the bathroom at the restaurant just a half hour before). So I implement a distraction strategy. "Grace, look at all the pretty pumpkins everywhere, and the fun ghosts!" She was a little scared of all the Halloween-themed stuff, so I try to keep everything light and fun. I have her climb on my lap as I point out everything,"Look at all those pumpkins that are smiling at us!"

Maybe three minutes into the cruise, she says, frantically, "Mom! Mom! I'm going potty!" (this is in a very loud voice, might I add) I hear stifled laughs and chuckles from other passengers. "It's okay, babe," I tell her. "Just get it out." Did I mention she was on my lap? Yup, that was so awesome. On the upside, she enjoyed the rest of the Halloween cruise MUCH better. On the downside, I did not. I should also mention, when we climbed out after the cruise was over, she was not the one who looked like she'd had an accident. Nope. That would be me. Needless to say, we hustled out of there pretty quickly.

So yeah...anyway...another super fun thing we did in October, of course, was Cornbelly's. I LOVE Cornbelly's. I really do. And this year, Connor was old enough to be able to have fun and experience it. Sadly, I forgot to take my camera, so I snapped just a couple pictures with my phone, but you should know that I barely managed to pull Grace out of the Princess Land or whatever (we were there for 40 minutes). She was enamored with that place. She also did the jumping pillow, the bounce houses, the slides (including the huge slide that you go down on burlap. Connor went on that as well with Boyce), and of course the little cow ride. Both kids also loved the fake animals that sing songs (think the cheesy entertainment at Chuck E. Cheese).

Grace is enrolled in a fabulous little playtime class at the PG Rec Center, and they took a field trip one day to Hee Haw Farms, which of course parents had to come, too. We had so much fun looking at the little animals, riding the hay ride, and then the highlight was picking out pumpkins to take home. Although I tell you what, it seemed like we had to hike like 3/4 of a mile to the pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins, which was fine until I had to lug Connor in my arms AND both pumpkins back to the main drag. Now that was...whatever.

I love this picture of Connor with the baby goat!

FYI, Connor was truly having fun on this swing. It just doesn't look like it in this pic.

On the hay ride.

Holding her pumpkin!

Okay, other things in October. One evening for Family Home Evening I convinced Boyce to take us all to this very random pumpkin patch called "Eduardo's" because he had a sign that said "Candy in the Cornfield: $3." And I thought it might be fun to take the kids hunting for candy in a cornfield. What we didn't realize till we paid was that the cornfield was just a cornfield...there was no paths cut into it to make it more easily accessible...it was not a well-groomed cornfield, if you will. It was just a cornfield with the stalks as high as anything you could imagine. ~~You know, the kind of cornfield where those huge wolf spiders build webs and hang out. Gives me the hee-bee geebies just thinking about it.~~ Boyce was grumbling under his breath about how we had better get our money's worth out of that place. But then we started raking in the candy like nobody's business and it actually ended up being fun. The highlight: when Grace told us, "Dad, can you carry me? I am a disaster in this place!" Yup. It was pretty hard for a little 3-year-old to navigate through!

I should at least mention that yes, I did have a birthday, so yes, I am another year older. Technically. But I still feel young ~~except for when I'm pregnant~~, so that's a good thing, right! I told Boyce I wanted us to go out to eat and to a haunted house for my birthday, so us and some wonderful friends of ours went up to Ruth's Diner for dinner (love that place!) and then to This is the Place to wander through the Haunted Village. That place did a spectacular job creating such a fun Haunted Village. We all had a great time. My dear friend Cami also hosted us for a birthday dinner one night, and then Boyce spoiled me on my actual birthday, of course.

Okay, well, now I need to get to Halloween, right? The week of Halloween was super fun. Grace's little playtime class had a costume party. And then our church ward hosted a Halloween chili dinner and carnival. Halloween was a bit of a downer for me because I came down with a cold and was feeling pretty yucky that day. So instead of doing a super fun Halloween-themed dinner (which I did make up for this week), we opted for a Papa Murphy's pizza and then Boyce took the kids trick-or-treating ~~while I hacked up a lung at home~~. My understanding is Connor caught the hang of it pretty quickly and was extremely possessive of his candy bucket (Boyce kept emptying it so it'd be light enough to carry and Connor did NOT appreciate him taking his bucket one bit!).