...and October.

I never considered myself a chronological blogger (if I can even consider myself a blogger at all anymore) but somehow it just makes sense in my life right now.  So in case you were wondering what happened 4 months ago...

Cabin

To my recollection, we have never been the ones to shut down the cabin before.  But with my mom still recovering it became clear that they weren't going to make it up there again for the season.  So one weekend S, I, and the kids headed up over conference weekend to close things down for the winter.  It had been raining all week and I can't even begin to describe how good it smelled up there--like fall and summer all mixed together.  It was chilly but I think the kids really enjoyed themselves.

Witches and Apples and Crazy Hair

It had been kind of a rough month for the kids, too, so I made a point to run them up to Gardner Village to see the witches.  Bean was very excited.  Boy wouldn't go near any witch.  We didn't do anything extra--we were there just long enough to see the witches.  Afterwards I took them to Arctic Circle to get a square pumpkin and replacement Halloween flashlights (they burned their ones from last year out in about a week...)

After that we met up with S's parents to pick apples at his aunt's house.  I didn't get any canning done this year (as I believe I have mentioned previously) like I had wanted to, so I was determined at least learn how to make applesauce.

The following weekend we went over to my in-laws' house where I learned the art of canning applesauce.  They even gave me a few jars to take home.  It was the best applesauce I've ever tasted.  (Side-note: I got my own apple-corer for Christmas so I intend to make my own applesauce this fall.)

Bean had her 'drug-free week' in the middle of the month.  When it came time to crazy hair day I wasn't feeling super-creative.  Luckily Bean doesn't have a Pinterest or Facebook account and she can't see all the amazing things some moms out there do.  She was totally thrilled with what I came up with :)

Halloween

Boy's costume came about by accident.  He had said he wanted to be Mickey Mouse.  I found a totally easy DIY idea on Pinterest that I was planning on doing.  I even had half the stuff already.  But when I found out his preschool party was literally in 2 days (he's on year-round track--thus he would be out of school on real Halloween) I desperately went to Kid-to-Kid to find the rest of his costume.  And there in the front of the store was this beautiful Mickey Mouse costume.  Sold.  And he was adorable.  And he was able to put it on himself so he literally wore it almost every day that month.

Bean wanted to be Maleficent.  hello.  They don't make kids' sized Maleficent costumes so I knew I was going to have to pull out the creativity bug on this one.  I think it turned out pretty darn good.  So did Bean if the following picture where I caught her admiring herself means anything.

It was always a tradition for me to go trick-or-treat at my grandma's at the end of Halloween night.  But living a far distance makes this impractical.  So that Monday for our traditional pumpkin-carving party, we dressed the kids up so they could 'trick-or-treat' at Grandma's.

It's always a little unnerving to turn a bunch of sharp objects over to kids and let them have at it, but it's also a lot of fun to see what they come up with.

Bean's Halloween party was the Thursday before Halloween as they were out of school on Friday.  She walked to the bus-stop with her horns head high and mommy praying that she didn't break the staff before the parade.

She even waved to us during the parade this year!  (PS they held it outside which I thought was a genius idea.)

My mom traditionally make ghost sugar cookies every Halloween, but with her only having been home for 2 weeks, I knew she wouldn't be able to so the kids and I made the cookies...

 ...and treated Grandma.

Halloween day itself was a little different this year.  The kids participated in the county library's summer reading program this year and, when given a choice between movie tickets or hockey tickets, Bean chose hockey tickets.  I think S's heart swelled a little bit with pride!  The only day available that we could all go was Halloween so we figured, what the heck.  It was fun--the players were all dressed in zombie jersey's.  They even had trick-or-treating during intermission.

Later, I baked a jack-o-lantern pizza for dinner, took the traditional front-porch picture, and the little ghouls were off for an evening of trick-or-treating.