October 18-24

                               It was another fun and busy week filled with Halloween activities.

October 18th was make a footprint ghost. The girls got to paint the bottom of their foot white and stamp it onto black construction paper. Paige of course added glitter to hers and Baylor of course had fun painting more than just the bottom of her foot. :)

They each added their own ghost faces on though Paige put the cute bow on Baylor's.

On October 19th it was paint a pumpkin. We had gotten some small pumpkins from Fred Meyer about a week ago and Paige has been so excited about this activity. Her creativity was shining and she took her time and I had to tell her to finish up since it was getting close to bedtime. Baylor was much quicker and started with the paintbrush and then it led to finger painting. 

The finished product!

October 20th was go on a nature scavenger hunt. I made this one simple and I gave them each a little baggie and told them to pick up whatever they thought was pretty or cool. We enjoyed looking at the fall leaves and it was a beautiful day to go on a little walk. Baylor was happy to ride in the stroller for some of it and would point to things she wanted or would want whatever Paige picked up.

October 21st was a Halloween I Spy that I printed off. Paige had hers down in no time and I helped Baylor through hers. She was good at finding them but I helped her count them and make sure we found them all.

October 22nd we took advantage of the beautiful day and did our annual trip to Thomasson Family Farm and go to a corn maze. I haven't been to a corn maze since high school and usually the corn maze costs more but this year with covid and some of the normal kid things not being available, it was just a flat fee that included everything including the corn maze. 

The girls first went on a little tractor ride and got a taste of what to look forward to after we completed the corn maze.

The corn maze theme was around the world and these are the places we "visited" as we went through rows and rows of corn stalks- Hawaii (Paige is pretending to swim), New York City to see the Statue of Liberty, to the pyramids in Egypt (they are petting the camel), and last to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. 

Here's what we had to get through. It was really fun and we only got lost and went in a circle once in the Statue of Liberty.

Every so often they had a checkpoint to show you where you were at in the maze. It was always nice to see one of those signs which helped us know that we were on the right track. Paige was amazing and after a picture I would say we need to take the second right, then third left, and then right and she would repeat it and help me remember it. I also took a picture of each sign to help us if we weren't sure. Baylor wasn't as impressed and just wanted to get out to go have fun on the slide and so I ended up carrying her for some of it but overall they both did great and it was really fun.

Every year a picture here to see how they have changed and grown.

Then the girls just had fun going from activity to activity. Baylor liked the slides and following Paige wherever she went. Paige liked the zipline the best.

Then we went and looked at the animals. They had some goats, calves, sheep, chicken with some chicks, a bunny, and some baby kittens. We couldn't get very close to them this year which was a bit of a bummer but the girls loved them. They also didn't have the corn box this year and in its place they had a story barn. You followed the signs through a hay maze to read the story. It was a cute story and Paige and I took turns reading the different boards and Baylor wasn't interested at all in the story and was content on climbing all over the hay bales.

They had a few games to enjoy- I thought it was so funny and cute how Baylor played corn hole.

More games to play and some bikes to ride.

We went to the pumpkin patch to just look at the pumpkins and then back to the play yard before heading home. It was a fun couple of hours that I got to spend with my girls and enjoy the sunshine.

October 23 was to watch Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin. We were able to watch it on YouTube and Paige made a popcorn creation for us to enjoy.

And our last activity for the week was to make Monster Munch. The original plan was to make popcorn balls but I knew the girls wouldn't eat them so we found this recipe online. It would have been more like Halloween if we could have found Halloween M&Ms but it was fun with the mini M&Ms and the candy corn added the Halloween touch. We made a small batch with white chocolate and a small batch with semi-sweet chocolate and we taste tested to see which one we liked better. Baylor tried a tiny bit but didn't want anymore. Paige preferred the semi-sweet chocolate one and I preferred the white chocolate one. Both are delicious and since Nate is out of the town this weekend, we had a fun girls night of eating our Monster Munch while watching Beauty and the Beast. 

I can't believe that next week is our last week and our final activity of trick or treating!

October 11-17

Another fun week filled with fun Halloween activities and the best according to Paige was Saturday for the Halloween party.

October 11- We made coffee filter jack-o-lanterns. This one is always a fun activity. All of us had fun coloring on the coffee filters with washable markers. 

Then the girls took turns lightly spraying them with water to let the colors bleed.

Next we let them dry overnight and then we cut out faces with black construction paper to glue on. They turned out so cute. Baylor loves to cut paper so I just took whatever pieces she cut out to create faces and they turned out so cute and funny. Paige even did the cat one in the middle and was more creative with it.

October 12- "Boo" a neighbor. I made Halloween shaped sugar cookies that we decorated to share with friends and family. The girls had so much fun decorating. Baylor dumped some sprinkles on a few cookies until I showed her it is best to put some in your hand and then put it on the cookie. Paige was her creative self and made jack-o-lanterns and Frankenstein's. We enjoyed some of them ourselves for our family home evening treat and then we delivered three plates to some people we thought would enjoy them and to let them know we were thinking about them.

October 13- We played Halloween Bingo. Thank you Pinterest for the free and very cute printable bingo that we got to enjoy with some M&Ms.

October 14- We enjoyed caramel apples. I did the lazy way and got some caramel dip and sliced some apples. Baylor wouldn't try it and was happy to stick her finger in the caramel and "draw" on the table with it. :)

October 15- On our list was to jump in a pile of leaves. The sad thing is that now that Nona and Pop's amazing tree got cut down, we don't have that many leaves in the yard. Last week when we went to the park there was quite a few leaves on the ground so I figured we would go there and improvise. But when we got there you could tell they recently mowed so there wasn't that many leaves to jump or play in. So it was a quick little outing to play in, jump on top of, and throw the leaves.

October 16- The girls put on a costume parade for us. We have a bin full of dress up clothes so I let the girls pick out three costumes and they paraded them and were so cute.

Baylor even brought out the microphone and was singing and dancing for us- a constant and daily thing in our house.

October 17- Saturday finally arrive and was the big day for the Halloween party. Paige had mailed out invitations for Anna's family and to Addison and Kinsley. She had fun creating them and also had fun helping me decorate for it. It turned out really good and we all had so much fun. For dinner we had mummy dogs, ghost fruit kabobs, a jack-o-lantern veggie tray, some spider deviled eggs (I forgot to get a picture of them. They were normal deviled eggs with olive spiders on top.), some orange soda, and some Halloween brownies for dessert.

Once everyone arrived, they searched for the Halloween rocks that we painted that I had hid upstairs. It kept them busy while I finished up dinner and then we enjoyed dinner. After dinner, we played truth or scare. All the truths (questions) and dares were Halloween related and kid-friendly. At first everyone was doing truth since I think they were worried what I had put as dares but once they realized they were fun, simple things all the dares were gone before the truths. 

I got some pictures of some of the scares- Paige trying to lick her elbow, Nate acting like a black cat walking on a fence, Mikey had to use a roll of toilet paper to dress up as a mummy and another one he had was to pick up 5 pieces of candy corn with his feet and put them in a bowl, the middle picture on the bottom is everyone watching Brett go outside and howl at the moon, and last Baylor got to dance to Monster Mash and Paige and Eliza joined her.

Another funny scare that Brett had to do was lick a lime- his reaction was the best. Paige really wanted that one since she loves limes but I'm glad she didn't get it because her reaction wouldn't have been as good as Brett's.

Next we did pin the face on the jack-o-lantern. I had different parts in a bag- two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, 2 ears, a hat, and a moustache. Each of them got to create the one they picked and then had to pin their piece on the pumpkin. It turned out so fun and unique!

We then ate our dessert before moving on to Paige's favorite game of the night- a Halloween obstacle course. First they had to walk through the black cat's poop (purple playdough), then through the ghost cave, through the bats in the hallway, then through the white streamer spider web, and last was a witch's hat ring toss where there was a bowl of candy that they got to pick out some pieces before coming back through. It was really fun to watch and I know the kids enjoyed it. Peyton was the most fun to watch go through since he was the biggest and had the hardest time going through all the tight spaces.

Next was a really fun game, filled with funny reactions. I had them all blindfolded and they had to guess the food that I put in front of them. We had zombie brains (cooked spaghetti), witches' fingers (carrot sticks), bat teeth (popcorn kernels), monster eyeball (peeled grape), Frankenstein tongue (sliced banana), and worms freshly dug from a gravesite (gummy worms). They all were good guessers and had fun with it and got into it. I loved seeing their reactions especially with the slimy things.

And our last activity of the night was Halloween bingo. Paige had put together some cute little goodie bags for each of them to have before heading home. It was such a fun evening and Paige now says we need to do it every year.

October 6-10 + Bainbridge Island

 We had a fun week with our daily October doings and on Friday, Paige didn't have school so we made a day adventure out of it. These two girls bring me such joy and I love seeing them enjoy all these daily fun activities.

Monday was hang fake cobwebs. Baylor picked out the color of the cobweb when I got supplies for everything at the dollar store and I picked out some fun sparkly fake spiders to go with it. Baylor had no desire to touch the cobweb so Paige hung it up. They both had fun putting the spiders on.

Tuesday's activity was make handprint/footprint bats. Your footprint is the body and you cut out 2 handprints for the wings. Baylor had fun tracing and then I just gave her some paper to cut on her own while I cut out the prints. Paige is the craft queen and knew exactly what to do without any help.

I love the cute little faces on both of the bats.

Wednesday they bobbed for apples. Biting a whole apple is quite hard especially with their little mouths so I had them do apple slices. I gave a big bowl to Paige and a little bowl with just a little bit of water for Baylor. I wasn't sure exactly what Baylor would do but it was fun to watch her progression. I loved when they both got their goggles on which just added to the fun and the cuteness of the pictures. For Baylor it started with her just playing in the water and "washing" the apples. 

    It took Paige awhile to get one but she was determined and kept trying and by the end had bobbed for three apple slices.

Baylor is so dang cute in her googles and her next course of action was "making applesauce" and tearing itty bitty pieces off an apple slice.

After watching Paige for most of the time, Baylor finally got brave enough to dip her forehead into the big bowl of water and was so proud of herself. It was such a fun activity and the table was covered in water by the end and both of their shirts were soaking wet.

Our activity for Friday was to have a fall photo shoot. Like I mentioned above, Paige had the day off school so we had a fun day adventure and incorporated fall things and photos into our day. I saw that there was a pumpkin walk on Bainbridge Island and thought that would be a fun thing for the fall photo shoot and looked like something fun to see. So I planned our day around that and found other fun things to do on the Island for the day. Our first stop was Bainbridge Gardens where the pumpkin walk was. The pumpkin walk was incredible and there were so many cool pumpkins!

You just walk through this path that is just covered on both sides with so many painted pumpkins.

So much incredible talent and creativity!

Baylor loved all the kitty ones she found and would excitedly point once she spotted one.

Such a fun thing to experience in person!

Then our next stop was to see Fort Ward. It is right on the Sound so I wanted to see the old fort ruins and let the girls climb and explore and also since it was right on the water we also got to do a little beach combing and Paige always loves finding a good seashell.

There were 2 different areas where the fort was so we walked along the path to find this first one and also happened upon some apple trees and had a little snack.

Some throwing leaf pictures to add to our fall photo shoot.

Then some beach combing and exploring.

Then we went up to the upper area of the fort for more climbing and exploring. This one had scary rooms to explore. Baylor loved them since her voice would echo in them. I went in one but got too freaked out and didn't want to go in anymore. I am a scaredy pants when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Nate was brave enough to go in one of the dark rooms on the bottom floor and when I saw one that had a door and imagined getting locked in one I said no thank you and watched safely from above.

We then made a quick stop at a new playground before heading home on the ferry. The playground was really fun and both girls loved it.

This merry-go-round was one of the Baylor's favorite things at the playground and it was so cute to look over and she her pushing Nate.

Our ferry ride back to Seattle. It is always beautiful to see the Seattle skyline from the water and Paige and I were outside most of the time even though it was pretty cold. And just like last time we were on a ferry, Baylor was not a fan of how windy it gets on the water.

Our final October activity for this week was paint Halloween rocks. I found some ideas online and then the girls just went to town. Paige loved it and painted so many and I loved seeing her artwork and her creativity. Baylor also really enjoyed painting the rocks one color and I had to put a limit on how many rocks she got to paint to save some for Paige since she was painting them so fast. 

Paige's rocks

Baylor's rocks- She painted the base color and then after they dried, I added the details to make them into Halloween things. She added all the googly eyes by herself on the red one.

Nona's incredible pumpkin rock, my rocks on the top, and Nate's rocks on the bottom. It was a really fun family activity that everyone enjoyed.

We are looking forward to more activities especially on Saturday for our Halloween party.