Last Saturday, we were invited to a pumpkin carving party with the Lee family! There were lots of Halloween-themed treats and games for the little kids, and our whole family had a great time taking part in the festivities with friends. Stephanie and Chwan were wonderful hosts and really threw an awesome Halloween party full of fun for all ages!
Happy Halloween! The Halloween fun continued into this week, even though we’d already had a good share of activities over the weekend. While Dan had carved his pumpkin at the Halloween party on Saturday, Mio and I decided to paint our pumpkins at home this week. She’s still a little too young to be wielding a knife, so we thought painting would be a much safer alternative. 😉
Earlier this week on Tuesday, there was a little Halloween event at Mio’s preschool! Parents were invited to come by earlier than the usual pickup time, so we could sit down in the classroom as the kids sang to us. It was our first time really getting to observe our kids in the classroom setting, so I was really looking forward to it!
While Mio was quietly sitting in the circle with all the other kids in the class when I entered, as soon as she noticed me sitting at the table, she sprang up and clung to me, refusing to sit back down in the circle and sing with the other children… much to my dismay because I wanted to see her participating like all the other kids. Oh well… she’s the youngest one in the class (they let her into the class this year even though her birthday was just past the cut-off date), so I guess she’s still comparatively a bit of a baby and has some separation anxiety issues. After the kids finished singing their songs, they were invited to change into their costumes for their mini Halloween parade outside.
The 2.5 year old class is the youngest class, so that day they walked out into the parking lot, showing off their costumes to the older classes that were seated across from them. The older classes then sang songs to the little ones — it was really cute!
Happy Halloween, everyone! Hope it is eventful and full of fun. 🙂
Yesterday, we took Mio to Cox Farms in Centreville for their annual month-long Fall Festival, which is the largest and most popular fall festival in the DC area. We took Mio to Moore’s Pumpkin Patch last year in California, but she was so young that she didn’t really get to appreciate it as much then. Now that she’s walking, talking, and more perceptive, we knew that she’d be able to appreciate this celebration of autumn a lot more this year! It was a beautiful day, so there were thousands of other families there! It took a while to get through the line to enter the farm, but it was well worth it!
Here is Mio by the goat pen, trying to feed them a corn husk she found on the ground…
There were lots of rides and activities for kids at the festival, but one of the main attractions was the hayride! We wanted to make sure we had time to go on it, so we got in line to ride it first.
The hayride was very eventful, with lots of little props and characters along the side of the road to surprise and entertain passengers during the ride.
…there was even a scrawny Superman that came to “rescue” us when we our hayride got “stuck” in the ditch! 😛
Of course, we had to stop by the pumpkin patch before we left. Mio had a great time wading through the sea of pumpkins…
A video of Mio at the pumpkin patch:
The Fall Festival at Cox Farms was definitely the most impressive one I’ve ever been to! It’s not only a lot of fun for kids, but enjoyable for grownups, too. We definitely want to go back in the future — maybe we’ll make it an annual family tradition! 😀
Halloween is still a couple weeks away, but we dressed Mio up in a pumpkin outfit when we visited Dan’s parents on Sunday. Dan’s mom just happened to have an adult size pumpkin costume that she had handmade years ago, and so we took some photos of them together as matching Jack-o-Lanterns! The cuteness is overwhelming:
Some pictures of Mio solo…
Trying on the hat from Grandma’s costume….
Dan’s mom let me try on the costume too, so I could get a couple Mommy-and-Me pictures as matching pumpkins, too! Grandma looks much cuter in it, but here are a couple of Mio and I together, for memory’s sake. 🙂
Look at that belly!
We always have fun at the grandparents’ house! Mio is so lucky to have Grandpa and Grandma nearby…
We have so many pictures from this weekend that I need to catch up on uploading and posting. Stay tuned for more! 😀
Happy Halloween! Halloween is always one of my favorite days of the year — I love seeing how creative people get with their costumes and decorations, and it’s a fun occasion to dress up! Dan and I didn’t do anything last year because I was really sick on Halloween weekend, and I was really bummed… 🙁
This year, we celebrated a day early, going to a friend’s Halloween party. Dan and I both worked on our costumes for a couple hours on Saturday afternoon before going to the party. Can you guess what we were supposed to be?
We may just look like a generic jock and cheerleader, but those who are sharp may have guessed that we were supposed to be characters from Glee! Since the show started airing, we’ve actually had several people tell us that Dan looks a lot like Finn Hudson, the star quarterback of the school and one of the central characters in the show. We’ve even had a random passerby come up to us at a restaurant to point out that they thought there was a striking resemblance. A lot of people say there’s a resemblance, some don’t see it… I can see that they have similarities in stature, the pale complexion, the pigeon chest, the general face shape, and hairstyle, but I think most of the likeness is in their facial expressions, like the face they have when they’re flustered or confused, or when they raise an eyebrow in a questioning look.
Anyway, we had enough people bring the likeness to our attention that we decided to run with it as an idea for Dan’s Halloween costume this year.
The costume was pretty easy — we took a plain red Nike jersey and stuck a huge number 5 on the front and back for Finn’s football outfit…
We stenciled and cut out white letters to spell out “HUDSON” for the back:
I have no such resemblance to any of the characters in Glee, but we decided to have some fun playing off of the pregnancy factor that I shared with Quinn Fabray, Cheerios head cheerleader and Finn’s former flame who was pregnant during most of the first season.
For the Cheerios uniform, I just ordered a simple red and white cheerleader uniform, and spent the afternoon meticulously stenciling out the letters WMHS (for William McKinley High School) onto red cloth and outlining them in white and black cloths, and gluing it onto the chest of the uniform.
Costumes complete, we headed over to our friend Joletta’s, who was hosting a Halloween party at her house.
There was lots of delicious food and we played a few fun Halloween-themed games! Afterwards, those of us who brought pumpkins gathered around to do some pumpkin-carving.
The completed pumpkins! They all came out so well!!! Can you guess which one is mine…?
I made the Totoro jack-o-lantern! 🙂 I was actually quite pleased with the result:
Dan went with his signature scary style with the carving, and created this two-faced jack-o-lantern. He carved it really fast, too; we were impressed! (He actually finished this complicated design before I completed my simple little Totoro… haha*)
Everyone at the Halloween party was dressed in such fun costumes! I really enjoyed seeing what everyone came as. :)Â Huge thanks to Joletta and Mapolo for hosting and organizing such a fun party!
We brought our pumpkins home, and I let Piper play with it since this is his first Halloween with us. Diesel was uninterested, apparently fed up from my past Halloween antics. Piper ended up biting off part of Totoro’s ear, though, so we had to repair it. 🙁
Today, we spent the day doing some major cleaning around the house and just prepared some candy for potential trick-or-treaters that might come by this evening. We hope everyone had a safe and fun-filled Halloween!!!
