Fall fun

Colorful leaves. Apple cider. Kids in costumes. Pumpkin carving. Witch fingers. Cross country meets. The Great Pumpkin. The Were-rabbit. Hocus Pocus. Donuts. As usual, we crammed in all of our favorite October traditions during the last week of the month. The temperature suddenly dropped and the wind howled all night on Sunday night (Oct. 27th), blowing most of the leaves off the trees and freezing the world at a rock solid 12 degrees. Fall left in a hurry! Here are some pretty pre-freeze pictures of our truncated fall fun.

Central Park in Sunnyside has some lovely old trees.

Picnic in the park: always a fave.

Leaf angels!

Amber had a hard time letting go of summer apparel. I had to hide her summer dresses so she wouldn't freeze!

An all-too familiar view out the front of the cross country school bus, driving through brushy brown central WA to various cross country meets.

Blue Heron Park at Moses Lake, WA was a small oasis of big old trees--it had such a lovely fall feel to it, I basked in the glow during the cross country meet there.

Another Blue Heron Park beauty.

Our last runner finishing the race at Blue Heron Park.

After waking up with a "crick in my neck" that wouldn't go away, I visited the chiropractor and after a major neck adjustment, he advised icing daily. I wear turtlenecks and scarves whenever the temp dips below 50, so putting ICE on my neck instead of wool and flannel was absolute torture! But it helped.

Costco lunch date with my Amby. She ate that entire hot dog and the bun. The girl is a TANK.

A witch and a princess, flying a kite out back behind our house.

Princess Amber-Aurora (Ambaurora) didn't like taking turns with the kite.

On Saturday (Oct. 26th) I had the presence of mind to take kid-costume pictures because we would be busy at a cross country meet on Halloween. Rose: a purple witch. Amber: Princess Aurora, the sleeping beauty. Jay: a "pot bellied elf."

Jay took a turn flying the kite after our brief breezy photo shoot. (Rose's witch hat kept blowing off! haha)

Pumpkin carving happened on Monday night, Oct 27th, in the last gasp of sunlight after cross country practice. It was barely 40 degrees and our hands froze in all that wet pumpkin goop, but we did it.

Amber loved the pumpkins so much and was so excited to finally be able to carve them that she kept kissing them.

In order from left to right: Shaina (two greenish halves), Amber, Jay, Rose, Jeff. My Halloween-Scrooge strategy this year was to pick out the softest, smallest pumpkin so it would be easy to clean and carve. It worked--I cut it in half and had it scooped and carved in less than ten minutes. I put both halves together and called it the Loch Ness Monster. I had just enough energy to spare to carve Amber a cat pumpkin. We never lit candles in the pumpkins because we were too COLD after carving them!

Quick family pumpkin photo in the dying daylight. I realized after we took this that it looks kind of like an awkward pregnancy announcement, with me holding two halves of a pumpkin, but it is not. Just jack-o-lanterns!

Witch finger cookies!