The Rest of October before Halloween

Oct. 15th--Tuesday

Noah's Preschool had a field trip to a pumpkin patch, so I went with him.  This is a different pumpkin patch that I have never been to before and I really liked it.  It's called The Plumper Pumpkin Patch.  

 We went on a hay ride around the patch first--trying to take our own picture

 then a friend took this one of us when the ride was over.

 they had these big old slides to slide down made of these black bumpy tube things.  I went with him on a couple of them to show them that it wasn't scary, but he had a hard time going on this really tall one by himself.  That's about as far up by himself that he got.  

 Then we found some other ones and he went down those ok.  We'd race down them, either one after the other or when were two slides together, we'd go at the same time.  They were quite big and fun.  

I thought it made for a cool picture.  

Noah coming out at the end. 

 More fun slides.  This place was great--it had so many fun places for the kids to play.  

another slide with a bridge to cross

 This was right by the field where they picked their pumpkins.  Somehow I didn't get a picture of him with his pumpkin.  

 Sign on the back of the wagon for the hayride.

 Mrs. Farmer and little Noah farmer

We ate a little snack there and then played with these dump trucks and tractors for quite awhile.  It was quite the fun place.  

Oct. 17th--Thursday

The elementary school had a family reading night on the 17th.  I usually don't go to those things unless my kids are directly involved in one of the activities of the night.  Paige was this time.  Her 3rd grade class was reading Charlotte's Web and the reading group that Paige is in wanted to put on a play for the reading night.  It turned out that it was only 2 minutes long, but by the way Paige talked about it and how excited she was about it, you'd think it was a full Broadway production.  :)  She was the Goose.  She got to dress up in a pretty white dress and wear a white feather boa.  She was so excited.  She had the whole "play" memorized--not just her speaking parts, but all of them.  She even put a little southern twang into her speaking parts.  She was so cute!  This was right up her ally and she really enjoyed doing it.  

 The stage and all of the actors.  The pig is her friend Hailey.

 She's such a little actress.  

Oct. 18--Friday

This was our ward activity.  It was a Chili cook-off, Halloween Party, Fall Festival--whatever you want to call it.  The Young Women were in charge of it though.  In our ward, since we no longer have an activities committee, the ward council divides up the responsibilities of ward activities to the auxiliary leaders.  So, the YW were in charge of the whole thing, but we delegated assignments out to the other groups.  So, we were in charge of the food.  Whew, that is a big responsibility!  We tried to get the actual young women to help out where possible, but we, as a presidency kept busy all night long.  It turned out great though and I think everyone had a fun time.  

 I only got a few pictures of the night.  I didn't even get pictures of my own kids in their costumes, but I guess I got pictures of them on Halloween, so they'll be on here later.  One of our counselors, Holly is a great storyteller, so for one of the activities, she took the kids up on stage and told Halloween stories.  

 The Primary President--Cruella deVille and her husband Woody, took care of other activities for the kids and did a great job!

 The Relief Society was in charge of decorations and set up this photo area for people to take pictures.  It looked great!

Oct. 19th--Saturday

Today after getting chores done, the kids went out to play in the leaves, after Lydia raked them up for her chore.  

 kind of blurry, but cute

 The girl in the striped shirt is Paige's friend Hailey

Then we went to the Pumpkin Patch.  Of course, we talked about going somewhere new, but we went back to our old standby--Lakeview Farms.  The kids love it there, so we went there again.  

 Our group waiting to get on the train to go to the pumpkin patch.  Lydia's friend Kali came with us. 

 Not too cool to ride the train.  

 Lydia is hiding her face because the train goes through a tunnel with scary masks and things hanging up and she refuses to look.  She does this every year!  :)

 Bella going through the hay maze.

 At the end of the maze

 Tough guy riding in the wheelbarrow for 2 seconds before he realized he didn't like it.  

Bella liked it.  Paige did too.

 Found our pumpkins!

 The train heading back

 Riding the boat back

 Watching for the dragon to pop up out of the water

2 cute little scarecrows

22nd 

Some projects I was able to finish in time for Halloween:

 The finished Halloween quilt--I love it!

 I was having a hard time with the quilting, but finally figured out what to do.  I liked how my spiderwebs turned out.  

I didn't have a Halloween wreath to hang on the front door, so I made this one.  There are 2 others that I want to make.  I have the supplies already, but didn't have the time.  Maybe I can finish them sometime before Halloween next year.  

On the 27th, it was the Primary Program.  The girls did a great job with their parts and all the kids did a great job singing!

It was also my turn to teach all the young women--we usually have one of the presidency members rotate once a month.  The bishopric really wanted us to teach a lesson on modesty, so that was my topic.  I had been researching ideas for a couple of weeks, and wanted to focus on why we are asked to dress modestly.  So, I focused on how it is our goal to return to live with our Heavenly Father and the way to get back to him is by going through the temple and making covenants with our Heavenly Father.  Satan doesn't want us succeed at all and so he tempts us to misuse our bodies.  I love this quote that I found by Elder Bednar and I used it in my lesson.:

“Because a physical body is so central to the Father’s plan of happiness and our spiritual development, Lucifer seeks to frustrate our progression by tempting us to use our bodies improperly. One of the ultimate ironies of eternity is that the adversary, who is miserable precisely because he has no physical body, entices us to share in his misery through the improper use of our bodies. The very tool he does not have is thus the primary target of his attempts to lure us to spiritual destruction.”

And so we talked about how Satan tempts us to dress immodestly and how that leads to greater sins and takes us away from getting to the temple.  I also had asked some of the young women to be prepared to answer some questions about dressing immodestly and those led to a great discussion, so much so that I wasn't able to get through all that I had planned.  But I loved that the girls were participating and sharing their thoughts and ideas.  

Oct. 29th

Lydia was able to go to her friend, Audrey's birthday party which was a "Cupcake War".  They broke up into teams and made and decorated cupcakes.  They came up with names for their teams and made up a poster.  Then they just played.  Lydia had a fun time.  

 Lydia took all these pictures on her itouch.  I think these girls were on her team.  It's Elise and Katelynn.

 Lydia's cupcakes

 I think these were all the cupcakes from her team and the poster behind it.  

That night for mutual, there was a tri-ward Halloween activity.  So everyone was supposed to dress up and they had all sorts of fun activities.  Maggie was red-riding hood and I was a queen.  This is also Maggie's friend Emma, who was a fairy.  I included this picture because I don't have another picture of Maggie dressed up.  

Next posts:  Carving pumpkins, Family Halloween Party and Trick-or-Treating!!