Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins

With October upon us, we have thoroughly immersed ourselves into pumpkin season :) We took the flowers that the girls painted months ago out of the front windows and the girls painted pumpkin, bat and ghost shapes to put up instead. They love to paint and they love having their artwork up on display in the window. It makes it really easy for people to identify our house, too! Megan was concerned about putting bats up because the bat in "The Great Mouse Detective" is a bad guy, but I assured her that her bat could be nice instead. She made sure of that by painting the word "NICE" across the bat's wings :) Beth mixed all her colors together and covered her cutouts. Kylie, for the first time, actually put a face on hers. She's getting so big!

One of Jack's favorite things is to get into the fridge. Every time I open the door, he makes a beeline for it so he can try and grab a slice of cheese or a tomato. Jack loves tomatoes (and apples, peaches, pears, plums, etc), but he only likes them if they are whole.
Last Saturday we went to the pumpkin patch at the farm we get our milk and eggs from. This is the first year they've had one and the girls had a lot of fun. We bought them ice cream cones of feed so they could feed the goats and the pony. They went into the petting zoo, although since there was a dog in it, they didn't stay long. Beth's stay was even shorter as one of the goats head-butted her and knocked her down :( They loved the chickens though and the rabbit and the pony and the rest of the goats :) There was a cut out that you could take pictures of and the kids loved climbing up on the bale of hay behind it and having me take their pictures in various combinations. I've included two of my favorites. They probably had me take about 20. We picked out our big pumpkin and some more small ones and headed home.
Sunday after church the kids changed into play clothes and I cut the big pumpkin open and put it on the floor so the kids could scoop out the seeds. Meg did most of the scooping. Kylie was kind of grossed out by it and Beth only touched it once or twice. She doesn't like getting messy. Since it didn't make noise, Jack wasn't horribly interested in it.
I love this picture of Jack :) He noticed me taking pictures of the girls and had to come ham it up :)
Beth wanted me to take her picture as well since she wasn't really doing much to clean out the pumpkin.
When all the seeds were out, we got out the paints to decorate our little pumpkins. Since the kids are too young to carve pumpkins, Rob carves one and we have the kids paint small ones. We had the elders over for dinner (while the kids were scooping out pumpkin seeds, Rob and the elders did the dishes) and Elder Ranger painted pumpkins too.
Jack painted for the first time. He was quite interested in the paint on his fingers and making marks with it on the pumpkin and the newspaper. I was very thankful that it was washable as he got it all over - his hair, his face, his arms, his tummy . . . He makes bigger messes than I remember any of the girls making!

When all the pumpkins were painted, Daddy set to work carving the big one. He explained to us as he carved that the nose was crooked because "Little Jimmy" (apparently the pumpkin's name) had been a boxer and had his nose broken a few times. That was also the reason that one eye was smaller than the other . . . A good reason I suppose for a lack of symmetry :)

Yesterday Megan had the day off school since it was Columbus Day. Rob usually tries to take that day off, but due to our trips to OR and MA, he wasn't able to this year. Megan wanted to go to the "big" pumpkin patch, so the kids and I made another trip there. Fortunately, one of my YW, Brittney, offered to go with us to help keep an eye on the kids. Watching 4 smallish children by myself is difficult at best :)

Kylie told Megan about the pigs and the tortoise and the pony and that was top on their list of things to see. We spent quite a while watching the various animals, although I think the favorites were the horses and the pony. Jack kept trying to climb through the fence to get a closer look.
I got a picture of all four kids on two of the leather animals. Beth really did like it - it just doesn't look like it in the picture :)
After looking at the animals, we headed over to the bounce houses. Brittney took Beth and Jack to jump in the bounce house for children under 4 and Kylie and Megs stood in line for their chance to go through the big bounce house maze thing. Below is a shot of them as they slid down the final slide. They went through a couple of times and then we went on a hay ride. At that point, it was looking like it was going to start to rain, plus it was lunch time, so we headed home, picking up lunch at Sonic to make the day more of a treat :) It was so much easier to have Brittney there to help! I need a full time teenager :)
A final shot - after dinner tonight (roast chicken with potatoes and carrots), Jack came back to the table. He had told us he was done and had gotten down, but apparently decided to come back for seconds. Rob was clearing the table and had put all the extra food from the kids' plates onto one plate so he could rinse the others. Jack climbed up onto the table and helped himself!