Pumpkin Carving

Gettin' ready for Halloween!  Todd and I helped the kids carve 

as they each picked some tricky patterns to carve.

Not sure why she made these funny/cranky faces at me.  But they crack me up :)

I loved this picture of them!

  It's to the point where pretty much all holiday traditions are for the children.  Life is so busy!  It's obviously no surprise, yet still amazing to me how happy children are to participate in anything celebratory, tradition, anything that sets the mood of an exciting upcoming event, even.  Like decorating. And I like to decorate.  But it's not the end of the world if October comes crashing in with a to-do list as long as Santa's shopping list and I don't get the Fall decorations up.  Still, I finally, all too embarrassingly late, told the kids that if they went and got all the decorations from their various storage locations, I'd put up the Fall decor.  Halloween was just about here already!

Nothing is sweeter than watching my children get along and enjoy one another.  Watching them cooperate and be thoughtful and playful and happy as they hauled in decorations and offered to cut tags off of things I never got around to cutting or dust off things that got dirty, or put away the decorations I had up, was BLISS.  It was so fun to work along side them and brainstorm with them where to put things, in hopes to surprise Daddy (who, let's face it, was also lamenting the SPRING decorations sitting where the Fall stuff could be) before he got back from a work trip to Bend.  The memories of seeing the light in my children's eyes, that burns for holiday anticipation, glow brighter and brighter with every decoration put in place, are richer than any well decorated home.  Though, sure enough, the home feels funner and happier in its Fall "trim".  I love my children.  I hate that this month went by without doing any of the fun crafts and things I'd taken note of from magazines and web sites.  I pray the rest of this Holiday season be filled with more family time and less of everything else.

Here's what they helped me do in the entry way.