Halloween 2015

Halloween has come and gone.... Ford was quite stressed when I started taking down our decorations on Sunday... and yes I take down my decorations the day after or else it stresses me out. He kept saying "It's not Halloween Day anymore" and as I put up our Thanksgiving/Harvest decorations, he said "It's Thanksgiving Day!". I kept saying he will have a major detox this week after Halloween is over because we did so many fun things but I think the real detox will happen after Christmas is over. Speaking of Christmas... we got our Christmas lights installed on Sunday as well. Don't worry, we don't have them on but we've been talking about getting them professionally done for a while since our house is so tall and there is no way Jon is getting on the roof and we had a guy come over for an estimate and of course Jon negotiated and they were up by 6pm. It is going to take everything in me not to start putting up my Christmas decor until after Thanksgiving (we usually do our tree the Saturday after). I just love this season!

So back to Halloween. Friday brought in flooding around Central Texas and I was so nervous Halloween would be cancelled but Saturday was beautiful and kind of hot! Leave it to Texas to be super bi polar with it's weather. We set our outdoor sectional in the front yard around 4pm and loaded up the coolers with beer and water (and 350 pieces of candy of course) and our neighbors brought over their popcorn machine and Green Egg smoked meat. The night was fantastic. We had neighbors and friends pop by throughout the evening, my parents came over for a couple of hours and my mom unicycled for the kids (yep she is 52 and can still ride a unicycle!), and took Ford trick or treating. Saying he had so much fun is an understatement. He ate cups and cups of popcorn for dinner and about 8 pieces of Halloween candy and would not stop laughing with his little friends. Jon and I dressed up of course, we were Donald and Daisy Duck to round out the Mickey gang and Ford thought we were pretty cool.  I love looking at life through the eyes of a 2 year old, it really makes you stop and appreciate the joy! Now I'll let the pictures do the talking.

(in case you were wondering, Jon and I were wearing the same "one size fits all" tights from Party City... not sure how he fit those calves in there because by the end of the night my legs were aching! He'll do anything for a costume haha).

Trunk or Treat

One of the many things that drew us to our neighborhood was the community. We live in a super family friendly master planned community (basically every has kids or is now an empty nester and once had a house full of kids) that celebrates all of the holidays with parades, events, and community outreach. I am really excited about this holiday season with Ford. Last year he loved Halloween and Christmas but was still so young and now he is so impressionable and at such a fun stage. He is scared of the scary Halloween decorations but is all about anything pumpkin, skeletons, and of course, Trick or Treating. If you know Ford in real life, you'd know that he is very enthusiastic about the littlest of things so you can imagine what a blast he had at our neighborhood's Trunk or Treat event last night. He was in heaven! He went from car to car saying Trick or Treat and in polite Ford fashion, saying thank you to each person. He was thrilled with how much candy he got and could have eaten 10 Dum Dums if I would have let him. He refused cotton candy and face painting but ate a whole bag of popcorn and got to hold a baby bunny, a 2 day old chick, and a bearded dragon. I went into the petting zoo with him and he told me that the baby chick was saying "Daddy! Dadddy" when he was chirping. He gets this high voice when he talks to Lucy like a baby and he was doing it to the animals, so precious! He and Lucy went as Mickey and Minnie... stay tuned for mine and Jon's costumes on actual Halloween! Oh what a fun night it was! Our community group all went together and we met up with other neighbors and friends. My heart is so full getting to celebrate holidays with friends we love. And this week we have a few more Halloween events coming up... a party for our moms group, another Trunk or Treat for church, a visit to Sweet Berry Farm, and of course... Halloween Trick or Treating! As much fun as the Halloween season has been, I am GIDDY about Christmas and what he will think.

The Pumpkin Gospel

A few weeks ago the girls in my missional community group (our church's home group/small group) were brainstorming ways we can love on our neighbors and ultimately share the gospel with them. Having kids makes it really easy to get an "in" with your neighbors so creating events for the kiddos is a huge win. We decided to do a pumpkin painting party where we would read The Pumpkin Gospel and teach our children about how God cleans out our insides of sin, gives us a new identity/face, and gives us the light of the Holy Spirit, just like a Jack O Lantern! I really love these sweet teachable moments with my kids, especially during the fun holiday season. It is so easy to use the holidays as a vehicle to point them to Jesus. We each invited a few families and it was so much fun! We pre carved the pumpkin to make it easier and let the kids touch the pumpkin guts and throw them in the trash, just like God throws our sin away. Ford is now at a really impressionable age and although he's not understanding the depth of the Gospel, he knows who Jesus is, learns about him all week at school and Sunday school, and gets excited about lots of things so I really look forward to doing similar stuff with him for Thanksgiving and of course Christmas! After we read the story we let the kids paint pumpkins and use Halloween stickers. Having kids really makes the holidays so much more fun!

I posted a few pictures on Instagram and people commented that the book The Pumpkin Gospel is almost impossible to find online. I did some searching and you can find it right now on Diapers.com for $10.99. We also have the book The Pumpkin Parable that I got on Half.com but it will be better for Ford when he is a bit older. 

Front porch sittin' on Halloween

I know I know, another Halloween post and it is already November! For the sake of my own memory, this year's actual Halloween night must be documented because it was awesome. The weather could not have been more beautiful.... Ford and I went to music that morning and spent about 2 hours at the park. We prepped a few things around the house and before you know it we were off to trick or treat. It was a lot of fun taking Ford to our neighbor's houses to "tee tee" but we didn't make it too far. Ford's little tree trunk legs aren't capable of keeping up with the big kids so he took a ride in a friend's wagon before we headed back home. We invited friends and neighbors to come hang on our front lawn for the evening and pass out candy, drink beer, and well... just hang. Jon does it big on Halloween. Colored lights and Zombies in every window, a fog machine goblin coming from the garage, music, pumpkins, spotlights. And this year we stepped it up and brought our outdoor sectional from the deck outside. It was kind of redneck-chic and absolutely perfect! We live on the corner and I wouldn't call our street busy but if you live in our little subdivison, you drive down our street. So it was definitely poppin. We live in a master planned community with 20k people, 99.9% probably have children so Halloween is taken very seriously in our neighborhood! At one point I was across the street at a neighbors and I looked over at my house and said "wow, I am going to go home because my house looks super fun!".

We put Ford down at his normal bedtime (7:30p) and the adult fun began. I couldn't have been more relaxed on Halloween night, lounging on the couch, curled up in a blanket, munching on way too much Halloween candy and salty snacks (I am pretty sure I ate 75% of a giant bag of ridge potato chips... I never eat those!). We had neighbors and friends come and go.... even random people who had seen our house earlier and thought we looked fun stopped by with 6 packs of beer to hang out. This is exactly how I have been envisioning my life...making my house a place where people can come to feel comfortable, wanted, and have fun! I finally had to kick people off the lawn at midnight and went to bed shortly after...the latest I have stayed up in months. The next morning I truthfully felt like I had a little bit of a hangover, ha!

Halloween 2014 was good to us and I hope it was a blast for you!

Happy Halloween!

Last night we carved our pumpkins just in time for Halloween. We held out because the plan was to carve baby H2.0's gender into a pumpkin and post it for the reveal but here we are still waiting. 17 days from my 1st blood draw and 9 since my 2nd. I have been so anxious and antsy up until yesterday and now I am convinced we will never find out! What is funny is our gender sonogram is on November 10th so we might as well just wait. I am not a patient person, oye. 

So with no ideas for my pumpkin I scrolled through Pinterest, found the first one I liked and went for it. I told Jon this was the first year that I did the whole thing myself, except for cutting the top. I gutted it, scraped it clean, drew, and carved. It really looks nothing like the picture but like I said, I am not patient :). Ford wasn't so into the pumpkin carving. Part of me thinks he was stressed that we were cutting into the pumpkins... he is obsessed with them. I may have to keep some fake ones out year round because he walks around with his mini pumpkin all day. 

At one point I looked over and he was "washing" the floor with the kitchen towel. Oh he is my son!

We spent about a half hour outside in the front yard admiring our pumpkins. Ford kept walking over and cocking his head at them, I think he thought they were alive. Ford LOVES our front yard because we have so many little lizards running around and he searches for them in the bushes and plants. He also loves waving at cars and people going by. And I feel like I need to mention this (even though I mention it so often) but Ford pretty much only wears clothes when we are in public. He was dressed in shortalls while we were out today and we were running really close to naptime so I just threw him in his sleepsack in his clothes for his afternoon nap and when he got up he was soaked in sweat. Thank goodness the weather is still really nice in Texas because he's my diaper baby!

Tonight we are taking Ford trick or treating to a few neighbors houses before his early bedtime, then we will set up in our front yard to hand out candy. We love Halloween and can't believe it is almost over! Tomorrow my Thanksgiving decorations go up!