Halloween Countdown Day 4

For day 4 of our Halloween countdown we made a Haunted House out of some extra cardboard boxes we had.  I found the tutorial here.  I drew the house pieces while Claire was awake and let her color on one of the other boxes.  I cut out all the house pieces and put it together while Claire was napping.  I didn't decorate the inside of the house because I wasn't sure how long it would hold up to busy little toddler hands.  Claire was so excited when I showed it to her after she woke up.  She has been playing with it non-stop ever since!

Halloween Countdown Day 2 & 3

This is the only picture I got from Day 2 of our Halloween Countdown.  The first thing we did was head to the library in the morning for discovery time.  We try to go every Tuesday morning and this week they did an autumn themed one, which was really fun.  Claire loves going to the library and starts asking for the "kids?" as soon as we walk in the building.  After discovery time we always go pick out some new books so we found a few Halloween ones we haven't read yet.  We went home and while Claire took a nap I started reading "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman which was an appropriately spooky novel for Halloween week.  After Claire woke up we ate lunch, and then spent the rest of the day playing with her toys, we took Rory on a walk, and cleaned up the house until Bryce got home.  Bryce had the night off of work so we all went to see Inside Out at the dollar theater as an early birthday celebration for me.  We had a good supply of treats and popcorn to keep Claire occupied.  She loved the movie and sat through the whole thing snuggled up on my lap.  After the movie we were all exhausted and went to bed as soon as we got home.

For day 3 of our countdown we made Halloween sugar cookies.  We baked the cookies in the morning before Claire's nap.  She was an excellent helper and made sure our whole kitchen got a good dusting of flour.  While Claire was napping I made the frosting while the cookies were cooling.  Claire was really tired from staying up late at the movies the night before so she napped for 3 hours.  I was able to get the frosting made, clean the kitchen, and finish reading The Graveyard Book before she woke up.  After Claire woke up we ate lunch and then decorated cookies!  Claire was a little ambivalent about the whole cookie decorating process.  She loved eating the candy and sprinkles but did NOT like getting any of the frosting on her hands.  She decorated one cookie and then watched me decorate the rest while she munched on (too much) candy corn.  I always make sugar cookies again around Christmas time so maybe she'll enjoy it more the second time :).   

After decorating cookies we spent a few hours outside raking leaves and cleaning up the yard.  We stayed outside for a couple hours and then headed inside when it started getting too cold.  I turned on Room on the Broom for Claire to watch while I made a big pot of Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup for dinner.  Bryce had to work that night so Claire and I kept each other company by reading our stack of Halloween books and playing hide and seek until it was time for bed.  I love doing a Halloween countdown and I am getting even more excited to celebrate Halloween the closer it gets!  

Halloween Countdown Day 1

I decided to stick to our new tradition that I started last year of doing a Halloween countdown the week leading up to Halloween.  For day 1 of our countdown on Monday I finished sewing Claire's Halloween costume (pictured above) in the morning just in time for our activity for the day.  Claire's costume is Goldilocks and Bryce, Rory, and I are dressing up as the 3 bears.  Later in the afternoon Claire and I went to the Enchanted Treehouse event at the Treehouse Museum with my friend and her two girls.  It was a little Halloween event where all of the kids dressed up and got to play at all of the different exhibits freely.  It was our first time going to the Treehouse Museum and we loved it!  
Claire found this giant bear and wouldn't stop hugging it!  It was pretty cute and quite fitting with her costume ;).

Making pretend cookies with her friend Brielle.

Claire made sure to crawl through every tunnel she could find several times each.

Trying to get a picture with all three toddlers looking at the camera at the same time is near impossible haha!

Playing in the pretend classroom.

Creating food chains in the dinosaur room.

Playing some life size chess.

Claire loves puppies and would not stop hugging and playing with the dalmatian. 
Feeding a baby in the nursery.

Our little budding scientist examining slides.

Exploring the USA.

And one more attempt at a shot of all three girls....haha.

On our way out they handed out a little treat bag with fruit snacks, a granola bar, a halloween cup & mini coloring book to each of the kids.  Claire was getting tired and hungry at this point so she was ecstatic about the treats haha.  We had so much fun!  We will for sure be going back again.  There is so much to do there, its a place you could spend all day in!

Black Island Farms

I've been wanting to go to Black Island Farms for the past few years and we've never made it there until this year.  The only night Bryce had off work was Thursday last week so we decided to go as soon as he was done with school.  He got home around 6 so we didn't get there as early as I would have liked but we still had lots of fun.  It was getting dark already by the time we bought our tickets and got into the courtyard so I didn't get a ton of great pictures, but they work well enough to remember the fun outing.
We played around in the courtyard first and let Claire do the bounce house, tires, slides, corn pit, and cow train.  She loved it and had so much fun running around everywhere.
She would've gone down the slide a hundred times if we let her.  We took her on the big slide with us later but didn't get any pictures since it was too dark.
She thought the corn pit was pretty fun but she did not do well listening to my many many requests to not throw.
Claire and I rode together on the cow train and Bryce sat in the car behind us.  Claire loved riding the train and kept shouting "Woo hoo!" the entire ride.
After the courtyard activities we decided to do the cornmaze.  It was getting really cloudy and looked like a storm was coming in.  I was a little worried about taking Claire into the maze incase we got lost in there and it started raining but Bryce insisted he checked the weather and it was not supposed to rain.  We wandered around for a while and got ourselves really deep in the maze when it started to get really windy.  I started getting a little anxious and keep telling Bryce we needed to get out before it started raining.  Bryce told me to calm down and that we'd be fine.  We pulled out the map and tried to figure out where we were at so we could find a way out.  After a few wrong turns and more anxiety on my part Bryce figured out where we were (at the very opposite edge of the maze from the entrance).  Bryce followed the map the rest of the way and led us out within a few minutes. I was extremely relieved to be back out of the maze.  It wasn't super late yet so we decided to take Claire down the big slide before we left.  I took her down first and then Bryce took her down.  Bryce was taking Claire down the slide a second time and right when they were at the top of the slide it started pouring rain.  They quickly slid down and we ran to the barn area to wait out the rain for a few minutes.  At this point I was even more grateful we got out of the cornmaze when we did.  We would have been soaked and Claire would have been freezing if we were still in there!  The rain died down after a few minutes and we headed out to our car.  We picked up Chinese take out for dinner and headed home.  Despite getting rained out and only getting a short visit there we had a blast.  We are definitely planning to go again next year and hopefully can make a longer evening out of it when Bryce's schedule won't be as crazy with work and school.