Fall Festivities

Last weekend was the big Fall Festival at the elementary school. It is one of the main fundraisers that the PTO does each year and includes a dinner (if you pay extra, of course), a carnival for the kids, silent auction, etc. We took the kids and they seemed to enjoy it.

Courtney doing the pumpkin throw (or something like that...)


Courtney, by the way, came home with the most loot from the evening, I think, because she figured out the secret to these types of events -- look for the shortest lines! The other kids would stand in line for quite a while to play a game they liked. But we watched Courtney discover that one game (the stick-horse barrel racing) had pretty much no line at all, so she would go through the course, get her prize, then go right back and do it over again. We lost track as to how many times in a row she did this one little game!

Hannah and the duck pond:


Hayley with her costume on backwards! (she insisted on wearing it that way)


And here's Hayley doing the hole-in-one game (don't you love the form she has swinging the club!)


I didn't get any pictures of McKay because I had to stick close to the little girls and he pretty much went off on his own.

Then last Monday, we had our annual pumpkin-carving FHE. We have traditionally carved our family pumpkin on the Monday before Halloween.

Dad always gets the job of scooping out:


This year, since the kids each got to carve their own pumpkin at the neighbor's pumpkin party, we decided to try using a pumpkin pattern for the family pumpkin. Many of the patterns are quite intricate and have very detailed cuts, but since we were short on time, we opted for one of the easier, basic face patterns.


McKay wanted a turn doing a little of the cutting -- and he made sure to tell us he was being very careful not to stick the knife through from the inside.


The finished pumpkin!


The other part of our pumpkin tradition is taking a picture of everyone with the pumpkin. First, we start with the kids:


And then we do a whole family shot. Sorry about the lighting on this one. I turned off the flash because it was reflecting badly in the windows behind and changed the other settings, but I don't know that this was much better!


And we end the evening by lighting a candle inside and turning off the lights to enjoy for a minute.



Happy Halloween!