Halloween Party and ToT

Our weekend of Halloween festivities started off at Morgan's preschool party.  Unfortunately, Rylee woke up with a fever that day so she couldn't attend as planned.  Thankfully Grandma and Grandpa showed up to save the day!  Instead Tenley and I met Paul at Morgan's school.  They start off the party by doing a parade in the downstairs of the church (her classroom is upstairs) and then take a class photo.

Then we head back upstairs to eat and then play games and do crafts.  This year it was a pizza party with chips and cheese puffs. Yum!

Morgan's BFF

After the pizza party, the kids got their dessert of cookies and juice and started on their crafts.  Afterwards they all played Bingo and got their treat bags. I'm so glad Paul and I have flexibility with our work schedules that we don't have to miss these moments.

That following Sunday was ToT in our neighborhood.  It was miserable.  The weather was awful thanks to Hurricane Sandy and my girls were not feeling it.  Turns out the reason two of them weren't feeling it and were a general whiny mess was because they had Hand, Foot and Mouth.  On Friday, Rylee woke up with a fever and Tenley started to get one that afternoon.  After 24 hours it went away but man were they still crabby.  I thought Tenley was getting teeth since she was drooling a ton.  Fast forward to Monday and they both had rashes all over.  We took them to Akron Childrens since it was impossible to get them in anywhere else.  My kids have never had Hand, Foot and Mouth before so I didn't know anything about it.  The doctor did tell us that the rash comes at the end of the illness which meant that it was basically over.  While Tenley was being examined they noticed her left ear was infected so thankfully we caught that and got some antibiotics.  Knowing all of that now, you can imagine how fun ToT-ing was for everyone.

It's a miracle I got them all to look at the camera that day!

Tenley was very confused by Rylee's wig.  She kept giving her the eyeball.

This is what happens when I tell Rylee to get closer.  I meant to her sisters, not my camera.

Paul took Tenley around to our immediate neighbors so they could see her in costume and then brought her back.  It was too cold and she was just not happy.  Mackenzie ended up coming over and joining Mo and Ry since there wasn't much ToT happening in her neighborhood.  I stayed at home with T while the rest of them headed out. They weren't gone that long and when they came back they were soaked. They were just happy that they got candy and continued eating it by the fistfuls.  Better them, then me.

Dussel and Pumpkin Carving

We made our annual trip to Dussel Farm to get our pumpkins and enjoy the festivities.  We absolutely love going to Dussel and it's really convenient that it's only 10 minutes from us.  We gathered up the girls on a Sunday morning and headed out. They were beyond excited to pick out pumpkins this year.

Once we got there we checked out all the new things they had this year! 

The girls even got to meet the "infamous" Chief Oliver!

(When I repeated this story to my mom and said the girls met the Chief, she replied an Indian Chief???  Yes mom, an Indian Chief.)

I take these pictures of them by the how tall this year sign.  

It's neat to see how much bigger they have gotten over the years.

Of course we can't leave without having our faces painted.

To Morgan's delight they had Hello Kitty.

Later that evening (after the girls begged us all.day.long) we carved our pumpkins.  Neither one are huge fans of sticking their hands in the pumpkins.  Matter of fact when I told Rylee to do it, she looked at me and said "Ew."

Paul was of course less than thrilled that Morgan picked out the most intricate pattern for her pumpkin.  He got over it though after she squealed in delight at the finished product.  Pay no attention to the fact that Rylee is wearing no pants.  She marches to her own drum.

Rylee with her Angry Birds pumpkin.

I would be remiss to let my child's first Halloween go by without forcing her into a pumpkin.  I was unsure how this would go since Morgan and Rylee were both 4 and 5 months and therefore much smaller on their first Halloween.  I have an almost 11 month old that I had to squeeze into a pumpkin. We bought the biggest, roundest pumpkin they had and hoped for the best.  Thankfully it worked and she didn't put up much of a fight.

Kent State Homecoming

A couple Saturdays ago we continued our Kent State Homecoming tradition.  Paul and I both went to Kent State, met there and are still huge fans.   We always run the Bowman 5K the morning of Homecoming at Kent State. I'm a little partial to this race because not only because of the festivities but, it was my first ever race. This year, due to working a lot and other obligations Paul and I had not been doing as much running as we should have in the couple weeks before the race.  Turns out that worked for me and I clocked my fastest 5K ever in 34:54 according to their official time.  I'm not so sure it wasn't a bit faster since at the 2 mile mark I clocked myself at about 21 minutes.  I'm guessing I didn't take another 14 minutes for my last mile.  Either that or my timing was off somehow.  Either way, still my fastest official race time. Yay!  Paul was using this race as a starting point to gear back up for his training.  I think he's hoping to do the Cleveland full or half next year so he has lots of time to train!

Every year after the race we head over to Starbucks with the kids to get some drinks and watch the Homecoming Parade. Since Corey and Ashley had watched our kids for us while we raced they came with us. The girls were all decked out in their Kent State gear and armed with their candy bags.  It was a little chilly but nothing will stop these kids from candy!  Rylee was especially into the whole candy aspect.  She would leave no soldier behind out in the street.

:

T-R-O-U-B-L-E

Serious about their candy

Not so serious about it

Rylee's loot

Normally (since a free ticket comes with the 5K registration) we would head to the Kent football game.  We thought about it since, hey don't look now, but Kent is actually GOOD.  After some thought it was too cold and miserable to take the kids but we got to enjoy the game at home.  Can't wait to do it all again next year!