Pumpkin Carvin'

The kids were super excited to get their hands in the goop and carve their pumpkins! All of them participated (in some capacity) in working on their pumpkins and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I also had alot of fun watching them work on their creations.




This is how Marissa and Nicholas spent most of the evening and they had a good time doing it. At one point Tom "removed" Marissa from the table and she threw a full bl0wn tantrum complete with tears and body stiffening...she wasn't done playing in the goop, Daddy! Needless to say, she ended up back on the table, but held a baby grudge for quite awhile.



























Wow, was Jenna ecstatic when Ms. Bonnie called last minute with news that she had found the PERFECT pumpkin stencil for Jenna!! She honestly is in love with her pumpkin. Thank you, Ms. Bonnie! This made Jenna's Halloween...I don't know what she's going to do when she realizes that we cannot keep it forever. It's not going to be pretty. And Jacob did a Cubs one (of course!). He did almost all of this pumpkin by himself...from cleaning it out to carving it up...he was into it this year. He saved one seed and is planning to plant it in the backyard.


















Going along with the theme idea from his siblings...Nicholas insists that his pumpkin is a "Thomas punkin", so we're going with that. (He's dressing up as Thomas the Train tomorrow).
Check back in a day or two to see the kids in their costumes and pictures from trick-or-treating.

Happy Halloween!

Marissa's On The Move

Just a little update on Marissa...she's 16 months old today! Lately she spends most of her time trying to perfect her walking skills. She's almost there, but still needs some assistance from her main support....which we lovingly call her "wheelchair". She's very attached to her wheelchair these days as it serves as her main mode of transportation . Sometimes she'll use Nicholas' dump truck for balance, too...but don't touch her wheelchair or you'll hear about it!






































Look...no hands!!

A Fun Fall Day

The kids had a day off from school today, so we headed out to a little pumpkin farm just down the road from us. I let each one of them pick out a small pumpkin to bring home, but we're waiting for daddy to pick out the special one that we will carve for Halloween. They enjoyed a hay ride and had fun running through the hay maze. I also couldn't resist buying another bag of freshly picked apples to make yet another batch of applesauce. The Martin's just LOVE fall!

Apple Pickin'

The kids were SO excited to head out to the apple orchard this year. Jenna has been chattering about our much anticipated outing for weeks now....and we had a beautiful day! We enjoyed a nice ride out into "the country" to a great little orchard that had lots of ripe apples available for picking. Good apple cider donuts, too!

Afterwards, Nicholas and Jenna helped me make homemade applesauce with the apples we harvested. :)

You can look at more pictures of our trip to Honey Hill Apple Orchard by clicking on the words "Apple Pickin'" and then "play slideshow".




Marissa picked her own apple perched on daddy's shoulders.

Nicholas had a taste for some Yellow Delicious.

The kids were happy to spend a fun day with their good friends, Robin and Tim.