Halloween fun

We did so many fun little Halloween things this year that I didn't want to forget, but they didn't each need a post, so here they all are.

Rebecca and her cute melted crayon pumpkin. 

I helped her melt the crayon and she told me how to cute the pumpkins. She went to town with the black paper and made their faces and glued it all together. I guess I did make the dads mouth-she's good at scissors, but not that good yet. Give her another few weeks and she may be! She said it was a "daddy pumpkin and it's baby." She was so proud of her craft project!

 Flying Bats

We wanted a cute, easy and inexpensive decoration for our porch. We decided that flying bats would fit all 3 criterias. We already had the paper, string and eyes. Corrine helped cut out the bats, and then the kids made the faces on the bats. The neon garage sale stickers were awesome to give them bright stand out eyes. We didn't hang as many as we originally thought-the porch ceiling was higher then I realized it was! They looked really neat blowing in the breeze. By the end of the month some got tangled with each other. The kids said they were "mating". I guess that means next year we should have lots of baby bats to hang up!

Pumpkin excitement

Rebecca has been wanting a pumpkin for weeks. Everytime we passed them going in and out of Hyvee she would ask if she could stop and look at them. Today I couldn't take walking past them anymore. She got to pick out her very own little pumpkin to bring home. She was on cloud nine with excitement!! She asked dad to draw a face on it, since it was too small to carve. She LOVED the face dad drew for her and was so proud to put her pumpkin on the front porch for all those passing to see.

Spooky Halloween lunch 

We made Frankenstein faces for the Peanut butter cups, pumpkin faces for the peach cups, monster teeth apple slices, frog eye grapes, mummy juice boxes and fishing rods with fish. Ammon said it was fun and alright. Simeon at 1st said it was kind of embarrassing, but then later told me it was fun and creative and wasn't that bad! Corrine loved it and so did lots of her friends. She told me they said her mom was a good artist and did fun things. Rebecca was so excited for her lunch, she opened it well before lunch and loved it all. It was fun for Johann and I to make even if it was a little embarrassing for the boys!

Halloween soccer treats

Ammon got to bring snack to the last game of the season which was the Saturday before Halloween. We drew faces on mandarin oranges for pumpkins, made ghost rice krispies treats and added a piece of candy to halloween bags. They were super fast to make and a cute treat!
He is such a good and entertaining goalie. He gets right into the mist of legs and feet and kicks the ball away if he can't dive on it. He's been scored on a few times this season, but has stopped many more goals from happening. Also at his last game he scored his 1st goal of the season. What a way to end the season-stopping a handful of goals on your team, and scoring one for your own team!!

 Halloween party and Parade at school

Rebecca and I got to help out with Ammon's Halloween party at school. Stand around and watch a very well tuned class get ready, and then have their party would be a better way to describe what we did. His teacher is amazing, and had the kids prepared for what to do, and we didn't do much but hand a few cups of milk out and take a few pictures.
Rebecca was in her costume and wanted so badly to walk in the parade with the kids. We ended up lining up with his class and walking around the side of the school to the front, then jumping out and watching the rest of it. One of the kindergarten teachers told us she should have walked with them. She would have LOVED that!! I love our school!!

Grandpa Smith

We went to visit Great Grandpa Smith in Muscatine for his birthday. While we were visiting there was a Halloween party going on with games, treats and trick or treating. Rebecca was the only one in a costume, but that didn't stop us from having fun! I had brought some suckers with me and had told the kids they could have one if they were behaving during the visit. I didn't need to hand any of the earned suckers because they had a bag of their own candy to much on.

Pumpkin Patch

We ran out of time to make it to an official pumpkin patch this year. Boo! Fall is too busy-we need to figure that out. One day we dropped Ammon off at Taekwondo and ran to Hyvee on Waterfront to grab a few things. They had an awesome pumpkin display out front of the store. Simeon was more interested in getting back to his book, (that sentence brings me so much joy!!) but the girls really enjoyed checking out the pumpkins. Getting your picture taken outside a grocery store might be too much for the older kids, so Rebecca was the only one with a ready smile for me.

We had such a fun October getting ready for Halloween. I love the excitement and joy the kids get out of everything we did. It makes the time and energy we put into doing these activities so incredibly worth it!

Jack-O-Lanterns

Tonight was our annual carving of our Jack-o-Lanterns. Grandma & Grandpa Smith had the kids over for a sleepover a few weekends back and they took them to get their pumpkins.


Rebecca picked out what shapes she wanted for her eyes, nose and mouth. She was alright with reaching in and pulling some gunk out from her pumpkin. She was super excited to see her jack-o-lantern come to life.



Ammon had his heart set on carving a tree and grave stone with a hand and RIP written on it. We aren't that great at carving pumpkins, so we went for a tombstone with RIP and a hand on it.
Corrine wanted to also go the traditional face way like Rebecca. Dad helped her carve her pumpkin.
Simeon had an idea in his head and he started cutting before realizing that he was cutting too much out and it was going to be a big open hole in the side of his pumpkin. We had to improvise and ended up with a face which he decided to have it eat Ammon's baby bear pumpkin.
The kids were so excited and loud when we lit our jack-o-lantern outside. We love pumpkin carving time!!

Look what we found!

Remember back at the beginning of the summer when my sweet Ammon wanted to plant a pumpkin for Halloween. He picked out a baby bear pumpkin plant and planted it, watered it, weeded (somewhat willingly) and checked on it so lovingly.




All summer long we have been watching the vine grow, orange flowers bloom, and a little green pumpkin start to grow, then watched it fall off and turn brown. The vine grew and grew all summer and the flowers were coming by the handfuls, but no little pumpkins.

Then came Sept 30th. I was talking to my sister Lisa in Idaho on the phone. It was a beautiful warm fall day, so I was sitting outside talking to her. She was telling me about their pumpkins that her kids grew this summer. I thought I should go check on ours to see if the vine had made it to the front of the house.

That was when I saw this...


Just weeks earlier we had looked all over the vine, but hadn't seen any pumpkins. But there it was hidden underneath some hostas that had started to die back from the cooler nights.

That afternoon when Ammon got home from school I told him I had a surprise for him after he got his chores done. He hurried and got everything done so that he could find out the surprise. He was so excited to see that he had indeed grown a pumpkin. It was mostly orange with some green streaks on it.

The vine took off this summer. We had to keep pushing it back into the planter box so we could mow around it. It wound it's way around the fireplace and started heading towards the front yard, but stopped just short of turning the front corner of the house. The other end went towards the back yard. It caught hold of the bush on that side of the yard and grew up into the bush. It's really pretty to see the orange pumpkin flowers blooming amid the leaves in the bush.




Today we checked on it and it was completely orange and ready to be cut off the vine. Ammon finished up his raking real quick so that he could cut it off. What excitement there was for Ammon to be holding his very 1st homegrown pumpkin!!




He set it with the pumpkins they picked out last week. It looks so small compared to the others, but to him it's the greatest thing!

All about Ammon

I was looking through my pictures and realized that I had so many pictures of Ammon at different things that I wanted to share, so I decided to put them into one post all about Ammon. I love this little man of mine. He has been giving the best hugs and kisses lately. He'll go totally out of his way to give me a hug and kiss and I'm absolutely loving it!! I want this stage to last forever!

At Ammon's last soccer practice for the season he received a medal!! He was super excited about his medal. They had a small party with Popsicles after practice.


This year (fall & spring) was Ammon's 1st time playing soccer and he really liked it. He started to figure it out the longer they played. He had some good friends on the team, so some times during the game we needed to remind him to play not talk!!
During his last first game in the fall and his last game in the spring game he scored goals!



While we watched Corrine's games, Rebecca and Ammon would go off and play. To say they are sweet together doesn't do it justice. Rebecca absolutely, positively, LOVES Ammon so much x 1,000. That may be getting closer to it. She follows him around, copying him and showing off for him. Who needs toys and playgrounds when these 2 are together. The umbrella's were instant toys for these two, and a few puppies rides are always needed during the games.







Ammon and Rebecca were my helpers one afternoon as we picked out flowers. Ammon saw a pumpkin plant and wanted to get it so bad. I wasn't sure where a pumpkin would work in our yard, but his sweet face convinced me to get it and figure out a spot for it later. We decided that a bare spot (that was suppose to get filled in with hostas) on the side of the house would be it's new home. He pulled the weeds from the area with me, then lovingly planted his pumpkin. It's a "Baby Bear" plant, and the pumpkins are only suppose to grow to be 4lbs.


Johann, Rebecca and I went up to school to have lunch with the kids. It was a special day so the kids were eating their lunches outside. When we got outside Ammon was sitting with his friends way up on a play structure. As soon as he saw us he gave us a big wave, and made his way down to sit with us.

One last look at Ammon. He brought this home from school last week. It's all about Ammon, done by Ammon. Under every picture is another picture similar to the top one, except on his self portrait. I love the way he draws himself, so I had to include both of them.



The sections are:
This is what I look like
My Family
His favorite place to be is: Home
What he wants to be when he grows up: An Army man
My favorite things to do: play soccer
If I could have one wish it wold be: for an octopus

Not sure where wishing for octopus came from, but it's just like Ammon to put something like that!!

Seriously I love this kiddo so much. He keeps me on my toes daily. There are times I'm so hoping he'll grow up and out of some phases he's in and so many other times I'll keep him my little guy who loves to sleep, hates getting dressed if it means he'll cuddle with me, give me hugs and kisses and tells me how much he loves me a dozen times a day.