My Adventures: October

I can't believe I just let October slip by with no blogging about all the great things that happened. October is one of my favorite months. For one, Gaupo's work incentive is Walk-tober and he strives to get over 10,000 steps all 31 days of October. That means for one month out of the year we go on family walks, and this year we even worked out together. I love being active as a family, so to actually have Gaupo motivated to go biking, walking, whatever is AWESOME!!

Gaupo pushing the stroller

Kylee and Tia on Scooters

Abby and Kade

I also loved October this year because family came to visit! I love Colorado for so many reasons, but being far from family isn't one of them. It was so fun to have them come, and I only got a couple of pictures even though we had a great time. Oma and Papa arrived on Wednesday the 16th and stayed till Saturday the 19th. It was perfect timing because I got Thursday with them all to myself. Well, I guess I had to share with the twins, but not the big girls. Although, Oma did go to both their classes and read books to them. The girls thought that was so amazing. Papa decided to walk with her to the school, so while they were gone I made bread and monster bars. With our day alone, I had them go to Costco with me, so we could get the refer-a-friend reward for me getting a Costco membership. We meandered around there and for awhile and came home. It was just fun to be with them. Our house is always full of projects and my dad loves to work on something. This time he chose to saw off the bottom of the guest room door, so that it now opens and closes easily. It took him awhile to get it just so (Papa is a bit of an exactist, which is totally fine), and I will tell you it works so nice now. Friday was the start of "fall break." It is really just a four-day weekend but it worked out perfect for our visitors this time. So, the girls got to have whole day with no school and Oma and Papa. Plus, Aunt Kitt arrived around noon. We were going to do something, but we ended up hanging around, visiting, going to the park, watching Twitches, and making snickers popcorn. It was so nice to just relax with them. Everyone stayed for the girls games on Saturday, so that was fun to have a lots of family to cheer them on. Oma and Papa left after the games to head home, but Kitt got to stay. We just enjoyed her and her and I stayed up way to late talking about sister stuff and it was awesome. A little bit hard to get up the next morning, but so great to see her again. I really miss having her close. I know when they finally move back things will be different than when she lived here before, but I am so excited still. Kitt left Sunday around 7:00, and the girls were so bummed because they didn't have school Monday, so they thought Kitt should hang around longer, but she had to go to work.

Abby and Kade, and half of Papa at the park

Tia in the sand.

Kylee on the Monkey Bars.

Monday of the 4-day weekend was really fun too. We spent the vast chunk of it making Halloween costumes, which if I do say so myself turned out very well this year. The girls even helped make them which I think made them even better. I have really enjoyed working on things with the girls this year.

Tia with her tail and wings.

Kylee with her ears and tail

Completely aside from costumes, the girls and I worked together to plan a Fall Party for a couple of their friends. They each invited one school friend and then Tori and Trent. We invited whole families but still ended up with only about 6 guest which actually turned out to be enough for us. We had fun visiting as adults, the kids had fun playing. Things didn't go exactly as planned, but it was still really fun. We worked on planning the party and making invitations on Sunday afternoons, and it was I feel like a great use of our time. The girls thought of what to have, what to do, how to decorate, and then we helped make it possible. We had pumpkin pancakes, sausage, and hashbrowns for dinner. Then we did a craft of a fall snow globe. They played pin the bat in the tree and had a pinata. There was plenty of time to just play and it worked out really good. I got 2 pictures after everything was over. So much planning and almost no proof. Kind of a sad deal, but the party was super fun, so oh well.

Pin the bat in the tree game.

The kitchen after math.

Of course our October wouldn't be complete without our Halloween celebrations. We watched several Halloween movies this year and even shared a couple with the girls. They did okay with them, although they did get a little scared with Twitches 2. Overall they did really well. Besides movies, the celebration was kicked-off with our ward Halloween party. It was potluck pizza and salad. It was super chill and I thought just perfect. I made a jack-o-lantern pizza for it, but it was kind of crazy day, so it got more toasty than I like, but oh well. The kids loved wearing their costumes and had a great time with their friends. Saturday was more soccer and we had monster tacos for dinner. I had everyone build their own and it worked great. Sunday was Autumn Sausage casserole. Monday we did meatloaf hand and pond sludge (potatoes and gravy). We also carved pumpkins that night. The girls pretty much gutted their own. They still needed help carving, but other than that they did great. I only had two tealight candles, so we used some old sparklers and they were way cool. It looked extra cool because it was so cold you could see the smoke coming off of them. So, I am very tempted to make sparklers a Halloween thing because it was really fun.Tuesday Jack-o-Lantern turnovers and dry ice and rootbeer night. It fun to let the kids blow the fog and then have some sludgy rootbeer. We had a ton of dryice this year, so it was really cold. It was already really cold outside, so slushy rootbeer was a little chilly for treat, but still so good and fun. Wednesday was suppose to be mummy burritos, but it was just burritos. Thursday, Hallowee, was the school Halloween parade and the traditional moldy mac and worms. After getting some food in the girls put the finishing touches on their costumes and Gaupo took them trick-or-treating. It was so cold, I didn't dare take the twins, but Kade and Abby were pretty sad to see everyone go outside without them. The big girls trick-or-treated for a little over an hour and got a great haul of candy and it was a very successful night.