This year for Halloween we took it easy! We had gotten a big pile of pumpkins from Josie’s school’s harvest festival. We took two of them to Sharona and Jeremy’s pumpkin carving party where the girls helped Jordi carve and decorate them. We didn’t even carve the big huge pumpkin, time just gets away from us these days as we try to keep everyone fed, sleeping enough, clothed and moderately happy. Another year we’ll get there. The girls were more active this year for carving at least. They even had previous practice hollowing one out when we cooked our own sugar pumpkin this year.

We also kicked off the Halloween week with a fun get together with some of my mom friends from the baby group I was a part of when Josie was born. Our number of families has dwindled but the number of kids has grown so it was still a fun outing. Celia was displeased at this photo because she wanted to be the one holding Ewan. Connor also declined to get in the picture.

Then on Halloween day we did all our trick or treating almost the entire time between when Josie got out of school till bedtime. We picked her up from school and brought the costumes with us and tossed them on before hitting the local business district for some early practice trick or treating. It got the girls into the habit of  the please and thank you, over some shy times, and seeing people in costume in day light. Celia is at the age where head covering costumes are very scary for her. So we had to hide out and wait for some scary people to leave the area at times before we could continue. At that point, Josie was a yellow princess, Celia was a ballerina and Ewan was a jaguar. Many of the businesses were super generous, like a giant cookie from Olivios and Quebrada just offered up anything in the main case.

After that trick or treating, it started to rain and it was time to go home anyway. We came home, had some candy and some non-candy food. Then we headed over to Waldo park for their annual Halloween party. It’s normally a little more crazy but this year was tame because the rain kept coming and going. The kids did a ‘fashion show’ which consists of walking through a doorway and having your name and costume announced. At this point I think the girls had switched costumes too. We tried to get them to eat some veggie hot dogs and vegetables and remembered to feed ourselves a little too. Then it was time for real trick or treating and I sent Ewan home with Jordi to man our door. We went off with my two plus Josie’s friend Sophie joined us. We made it down Amsden St back to our house at which point Celia wanted a break and stayed home. I took Josie and Sophie down the rest of our street until Sophie said she was ready to go home too, we brought her home and then picked Celia up to finish up a few more houses on the opposite side of our street. Josie was then content. We brought it all home and they dumped out their huge pile of loot. We had even made drop offs of the afternoon candy and still the pumpkins were huge.

Because of the aforementioned rain, plus carrying baby, plus wanting to stay in the moment, you get crummy ipod photos only.

Josie also did a great job carrying around a box for unicef and shaking down the neighbors for money. My favorite was when one person gave her a dollar instead of coins she said “that person gave me the wrong kind of money!” Then I explained how the paper stuff was even better. Her box was stuffed full by the end of the night.

They ate a bunch that night and a few more pieces over each day. They shared with us willingly, what great kids! And then by Tuesday we sent almost all of it to Jordi’s office, and capped off the week of Halloween on Thursday by making some M&M cookies out of the bags I saved for such an event.

Also on Friday after Halloween my dad’s office threw a crazy party. They had crafts for the kids, food that looked liked rats, eyeballs, guts and more gory options, liquid nitrogen ice cream, and custom flip book movies. It was a great time and even had a ‘swamp thing’ cake rumored to weigh 300 lbs! It took up an entire 8ft by 8ft table.

The above one is from a few weeks ago. Below is today.

We celebrated fall with our usual activity, apple picking. This year we were even on the ball enough to go almost in September! Usually we’re a bit later in the season. I remember going three years ago waiting and waiting for Celia to arrive while we went. We went again to Honeypot hill orchards and picked lots of great apples. Josie decided she likes the honey crisp ones the best for eating out of hand. The rest were mostly baking apples so I definitely agreed with her. They were sweet and all the apples were very juicy. Both girls were great at picking this year and following proper picking etiquette. Celia’s favorite part may have been throwing the half eaten apples under a tree once she was done trying them.

We started off our day having a picnic breakfast of dunkin donuts on my parents front lawn. It was the fastest way to get us moving on the way out to picking.

Then we all headed out in our minivan, me and Ewan in the back row, which thankfully made him a much happier traveler. We got there and headed out to pick apples first.

And then I handed Ewan to my dad so I could take pictures and pick apples and he could get some quality baby time in.

Pictures are of course the point of apple picking. And it was a very lovely day for it all.

On the way out there was a gorgeous tree in full fall transition and so I had everyone pose in front of it for new pictures for my walls.

After picking the apples Jordi brought them back to the car so we could go to the hayride and all the other amusements.

Then we got to go on the hayride.

We saw the three little pigs, the goats, the chickens and bunnys. We ate donuts and veggie burgers before heading back home.

Those apples made their way into a yummy crisp and applesauce, both of which were devoured quickly. The girls helped me do the chopping withe some butter knives. Josie’s got a real technique.

Well Josie’s learned one new thing at Kindergarden at least, spider swinging. And Ewan about two weeks ago learned to roll over! But he’s taking a page from Josie’s playbook and although he did it multiple times, over more than one day, he’s now stopped entirely. He pushes up, but just lays down if he gets tired instead of rolling. It’s like he forgot.

Today I cooked my first ever whole pumpkin. It went into soup for dinner, and muffins for tomorrow.

Josie had her first sick day from school.

As overheard on the way back from the park. Celia hit her hand on a stone wall. “Oww Josie I hurt my hand. We have to play doctor when we get home.”

And I caught Ewan on camera with his new trick.

When I asked Josie what she wanted to do this summer on vacation she said she wanted to get dunkin donuts and go to the beach really early. This came about because last year we did just that because the girls were getting up soooo early in the morning so I thought it might as well take advantage and go get some of that nice morning light. Plus coffee. Apparently she thinks of it now as tradition as that was what she repeatedly asked me to do. So one morning I got us up and out and we went. Problem was we barely had any clear skies. I literally took about 5 minutes of pictures with some sun and then the whole place was covered in clouds again. Which doesn’t make for such pretty beach shots (yay lightroom). Thankfully they decided to cooperate for those five minutes. They loved jumping off the ledge and making sand castle ‘cakes’. But without any shovel or buckets (I had my hands full enough with food and three kids) the morning was short lived and we came back to bring the rest of the household back to it’s normal loud level.

For the photography geeks. These were taken with my 35mm DX lens because I didn’t want to have to step back far from Ewan while the girls held him. But now on my full frame camera it produces a vignette (the black around the edges and corners) which I’m actually finding to be kinda cool and a neat vintage effect. Or perhaps I’m just too captivated with the instagram look like everyone else. Maybe Santa will bring me a 50mm that’s for full frame.

when will we go back to vacation? She really liked it apparently. Not hard to imagine why! One of our favorite things to do is have a picnic on the beach for dinner or just have an early dinner and play on the beach after dinner. Most nights there was wind, although not for a few of them oddly enough. Unfortunately on our last night Celia was flying my dad’s kite and let it go and it went into the power lines. This time we got a backup system so that won’t happen again!

Down on the cape we had some more shots with Ewan included on our windy morning on the beach. Josie took some time to make another picture this year for the lifeguards on the beach. She did one last year too. She’s always a fan of talking to life guards and the teenage girls are usually quite fond of little girl admirers! Ewan just wanted out of the wind.

Super cute feet on my 2 year old! The  toes look so perfect they look painted!

Celia tried  to convince us multiple times that she didn’t need sun block because she had the sand to cover her and then she’d proceed to bury her legs in the sand. Which made the sunblock application… oh so much fun. We got the hang of it by the end of the two weeks at least!

I had fun in cape cod in our bedroom, dramatic light to say the least. I was trying to capture a range of emotions.

don’t squeeze too hard!

Josie had her first day of kindergarten yesterday and she said she liked it! This is literally the best picture I could get of her that morning though, somehow this expression was fixed on her face. Big day!

She remarked today though that they haven’t ‘really’ taught her anything yet. Except a new song about fish with their hands in their pants pockets.

Celia loves the big swings at Josies school!

Got a few more in the afternoon!