Spooktacular Halloween!

Our annual haunted castle! This year we got a Halloween house (chocolate cookie) and a Christmas gingerbread house at Sam's. It's a great kit that even came with colored, flavored fondant! It has become one of our favorite holiday traditions!

This kit gave a good tip that I'd never done before. You decorate the sides before you put it together. It works a lot better. We each had our own sides, then we let them dry and put it up! Voila! I highly recommend it!

Pumpkin patch

We went on a great trip today to the Elgin Christmas Tree Farm's Pumpkin Festival. It was great. They charge an admission fee ($7/adult, $5/child and you can download a coupon for 1 free child admission on their website), but everything inside is free. So I think it's a pretty good deal. Also, their pumpkins are really cheap!! I think tomorrow is the last day of the festival. Here's what was included in the price:

Face painting and pumpkin painting
Live music with a Bluegrass flavor
Scenic hayride
* NEW * Permanent Crazy Maze (wood post and netting)
Hay jump (cancelled because of drought, no hay)
Hay maze
Animals to visit
Antique tractors to see
Children's play area
Kid activities (carnival games)
Rubber duck races
Kiddie train ride
Great fall/pumpkin photo opportunities
Visit with the Elgin Humane Society puppies

First was the "crazy maze". Good for the little one's since it's pretty simple to get through, but still fun!

Here's the hay maze. The kid's loved it!

Outside the hay maze, they had this goat tied up all by itself (weird). It was really nice and didn't mind being petted.




The pumpkins were OK, not the best selection, but you don't really go there for the pumpkins, it's all the other stuff that's fun!

Like free face paint.

Picture opportunities.

A corn field maze. This one was fun because it was hard to find your way through.

And the hay ride. It was great. It took you through the farm with 3 different stops and stuff to do at each place.

Overall a great day. On the way there we stopped in Elgin and ate at one of our favorite BBQ places Meyer's. Awesome! In the car on the way home I asked Ellie, "So did you have a good day?" Her response, "It was an unbelieveable day!" Nice to hear once in a while.

Sleepover!!

Ellie and Logan have made friends with some kids that live right down the street by the park. Cameron and Cayden. Cameron's in 2nd grade and Cayden in 4th. It's a perfect set up, one playmate for each of them. They've been going back and forth between our houses for the last few months. The idea of having a sleepover has been in the works for a while now. Tonight's the big night.

It started out to be just Logan staying with Cayden. But Ellie really wanted Cameron to come to our house. At first I resisted this only because Ellie has a Daisy sleepover tomorrow night and I didn't want her sleep messed up 2 nights in a row, but what are you going to do? So we decided it would only be fair to have Cameron come to our house if Logan was going to theirs. So that's what were doing.

The girls are having a great time and I can only hope that Logan is being nice and polite over at their house. This is his first time to have a sleepover with anyone but family. I'm sure he'll be fine though.

Wish us luck for a night where everyone sleeps well!!

I also wanted to throw in a few pics of the ever growing Gordan! He still doesn't croak or do anything annoying. And I still think he's cute. Go figure!