Taste of Trick or Treat

Because the sun isn't outshining this evening . . .

Can you believe how they've grown?!

Too cute. Not sure Lydia understood why we were dancing and bawking.

Zane wanted to be sure to cover his face this evening. He's a true cowboy.

Pumpkin Designs

The cutting is always intense for Vanessa. Zane likes the knife.

I was laughing at Vanessa's reactions and comments. She didn't like me taking a picture of the moment.

Vanessa and Zane drew the design and Daddy carved them again. Then the kids added their special touch with freckles and eyelashes. :-)

Their best spooky look. There were several attempts.
Vanessa wanted to enter her school's pumpkin contest again. She researched ideas on her iPod and came up with Plex.

Zane is making one too. He asked if he could do Muno but I didn't have enough red paint.

Monster Mash

We put off Avery's Monster Mash dance until this year. This year Vanessa had big plans to go to meet up with friends. She loved that all of us could be there too. Zane's costume this year is Chloe's Closet's Jet (blue sneakers) dressed as a cowboy. :-) Vanessa is a monarch butterfly. We scored clearance last year and she discovered it in my closet a couple of months ago. She could hardly wait to break it out for this event. It took everything in her to wait. Zane also scored clearance but this year's choice buys us another year before breaking it out. :-)

Zane saw this inflatable cat with moving head at the At Home store in August. He was thrilled to find it at Avery too. We had to get a picture.

(Charlotte, Ella, Vanessa, Gracie, Kylie, and Sydney)

After a trip to eat in the cafeteria, the second graders mostly ran in circles and played chase. We couldn't get our TMNT (Roman), Captain America (Joshua), and Skeleton (Dylan) friends to pose but it was fun to party with them. Eventually Vanessa smacked heads with someone and soon after was ready to go home. I'm so thankful she knows when she's had enough.

Mining Parenting

I think parenting is a lot like mining -- digging to find important elements of each child. However, once parents find the unique elements for each, there seems to be a tendency to only polish the ones that naturally seem shiny and sparkly and ignore the duller ones. In other words, what I'm tempted to do is focus only on the elements that naturally shine and sparkle and ignore the ones that seem dull, when really I need to balance opportunities to lift up more of their duller elements so as to help refine each personhood, leaving no stone unturned.

Maize Maze

Last Saturday we went from OSU football partying to attempting the corn maze at The Maize at Little Darby Creek with Vanessa's Girl Scout troop. This year's maze was designed in honor of the 40th anniversary of Archie Griffin's first Heisman win. We didn't go in the way we should but we did eventually make our way back out after venturing through the many paths.

Before attempting the maze, the girls drove peddle cars, said hi to bunnies and pigs, played in the barn, bounced to their hearts' content, and rode a cow train. Then the girls took a wagon ride and checked out all kinds of cool pumpkins, where many of them were thrilled to choose baby pumpkins.

What is with Vanessa sitting on pumpkins?

Fall Friday

Aunt Leah was a good sport to push these rugrats.

Zane spent enormous energy feeding the goats sticks and hay. They didn't seem interested in their typical feed or corn. It was so cute to see how proud Zane was to figure out what the goats wanted to eat.  

I didn't run as wild as the kids, but I may have been more exhausted.