Great Pumpkin and Ice Cream!

 I think it's fair to say that Noah and Mikayla have had a pretty good day :-p  After school this morning, running errands dressed in their costumes and a spooky dinner they probably thought it wasn't going to get much better.  Wrong!  After confirming it earlier in the week Grant and I have been looking forward to the annual showing of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" all week.  Both the kiddos are at a point where they can enjoy the tradition, too.  And to make it even better, Grant took them to Cold Stone shortly after dinner to go use their free ice cream coupon as well.  I may never get them in bed tonight...  Still, Halloween only comes once a year (as a I reminded Grant who was ready to lose it with them after the HUGE mess they made 'playing' in the bathtub) and they are only little for so long, so I figure we have to make the most of it.  I know it's easy to say that now, but hopefully next time thy're driving me up a wall I can remember that as well ;-)

My Tiger lovin' very dirty Tinkerbell

 I had to get a better picture of the devastation loosed on her Tinkerbell costume by the BBQ worms

 Kayla got mint ice cream with sprinkles

 Noah chose cotton candy with white chocolate chips - which I have to point out that I find incredibly ironic as he claims not to like cotton candy and can usually take or leave chocolate...

 Ready for some Great Pumpkin Watching

 Cutest worn out Halloween kiddos ever

Along with one cute worn out Daddy ;-)

A Spooktacular Dinner!

 Happy Halloween!  I hope you didn't think that I, the girl who is obsessed with 'cute' food wasn't going to get into the holiday spirit and create a creepy crawly meal the whole family would love.  I've only been planning this one for days now :-p  So enjoy our feast of disgustingness, it was a huge hit here!

Swamp juice - complete with worms!

 BBQ worms

 Chocolate ghosts (Funny side note - these were totally supposed to be dipped in white chocolate for the ghostly look, and I had checked the other day to make sure I had some white chocolate in the cupboard.  What I apparently failed to check was the expiration date on said white baking chocolate, which was two years ago.  Thank goodness for all of the Halloween candy stash that allowed me to improvise ;-) )

 Bones and bloody entrails

 Zombie guts

 Both kiddos were obsessed with drinking their swamp juice to get to the worms

 Mikayla chowing down on the worms

 Noah and his worms

 Ewwwww!

School Halloween

Just got back from the costume parade at Noah's school and wanted to make sure to post the pictures.  The kiddos were absolutely adorable.  And God bless Mrs. Porto - when she saw my little Tinkerbell came all decked out (because heave forbid one do something the other doesn't!) she invited Mikayla up to sit with the class, show off her costume and even be in the parade.  Mikayla was in seventh heaven!

 My fireman (whose oxygen tank pretty much officially bit the dust this morning - it had a good run!) gets ready for school to start

 Daddy took a picture of Tinkerbell upside down

 The firefight is off to the right and Tinkerbell is on the left

 She was so proud!  Mrs. Porto asked her who she was, what she likes to do (fly!) and where Peter Pan was (to which she shrugged)

 The firefighter showing off his costume

 Getting ready for the parade

 Class photo op!

One Blustery Day

 Holy frog legs, Batman, it's windy out there!  It has been one blustery day here in Farmington Hills.  We've had consistent winds of 25-35 mph, with gusts over 50 mph!  It's one of those days that there was no thought of going out unless we absolutely had to (like for Halloween story time, hehe) which was A-OK with us because it's Tuesday which means we have lots planned.

After breakfast, while I cleaned the house for a bit, the kiddos got out the play doh.  Of course they had to include Flat Peyton in their play time.  God bless the person who came up with the idea of play doh.  Even if I have to try to scrape it out of the carpeting and off the table, the joy and creativity Thing 1 and Thing 2 get out of it is totally worth it.

Then, first on our Kid Kitchen Tuesday agenda was for them to help me make dinner.  I've been racking my brain for a meal they can help me prepare when the obvious finally dawned on me - meatloaf!  I think it might be virtually impossible to mess up meatloaf.  You throw a bunch of stuff in a bowl, mix it together and bake it.  I've never used a recipe before and actually explained it to the kiddos by saying "You mix a whole bunch of stuff together, whatever you want" to which Noah suggested adding Skittles.  We passed on that option...  It's also a great make it now, bake it later dish.

They did an excellent job and were so stinkin' proud of themselves.  They kept saying that Daddy was going to be so impressed.

We then tried to use up some of the Halloween candy in a project that we could send to work with Daddy.  (His co-workers either love me or hate me, I'm convinced because of all the stuff I send to work with him)  We came up with Reese's Krispies - how much fun.  You'll have to see the results.

And for lunch - rainbow pasta.  Noah chose blue and Mikayla wanted purple.  I'm thinking of buying stock in food coloring seeing all the uses I am finding for it lately.  Super easy yet wildly entertaining.

Though there's not any pictures, I let them help make the rest of dinner, too.  Mikayla rolled up the crescent rolls (interesting...) and made cherries and pudding while Noah got to make mashed potatoes.  It was a lot of fun to see how proud of themselves they were when it was all finished.

Alright, off to tackle the rest of this crazy windy day...
 

Play doh fun

 Flat Peyton played, too

 I wanted proof that I made them wash their hands before you see the rest of these pictures...

 They actually got to decide how much of each of the ingredients to add

 And the mixing begins

 Their finished meatloaf

 Unwrapping the Reese's

 I let Noah handle the knife work on this one

 Aren't they cute?

 Yeah, them too ;-)

 Mixing up their rainbow pasta

 Noah's blue pasta

 Mikayla's purple pasta

 To complete my cool mom status for the day, I even let them eat lunch with their fingers ;-)

 Unforeseen consequence of blue pasta - blue tongue!

 Mikayla wasn't entirely sold on the reese's krispies

We took Flat Peyton with us to Halloween story time