Our Family Fall Festival

My sister was an elementary school teacher, and she is really creative when it comes to fun with kids.  We had already planned on having our brother and his family and our parents out for chili and costumes and all that, but she took it up a notch and planned a fall festival for us.  While driving back and forth from church, she and I came up with a list of fun activities and supplies.  Saturday night after church, we made a late-night Wal-Mart run (Where, incidentally, she potentially saved my life from a car about to crash onto the sidewalk and right into us.  I say "potentially" because we realized later that the honking, screeching car full of ninny high school boys wasn't actually going to run over us, but it sure seemed like it at the time, and she literally shoved me out of the way and tried to heave me over the retaining wall.  It was hilarious--after we stopped shaking.)  Anyway.  We discovered that there were no pumpkins to be found at Wal-Mart two days before Halloween because our local pumpkin patch had bought the entire town out!   But we got everything else we needed and headed home.

Sunday after church we set up my backyard with a table for pumpkin carving,

 one for stamping shirts for the kids, a face painting table, and areas for pumpkin ring toss and pumpkin bowling.  We set up fun Jack Johnson music on the deck and let the kids decorate.  They drew little ghosts and bats and hung them from our trees.  Addie contributed by drawing "pumpkin hop scotch," which was really drawings of undiscernable things strewn all over the deck.

 My dad manned the pumpkin carving and decorations table.

 Caiden contributed by playing on my sister's phone.  Not super helpful :)

 Leslie painted our faces, which was probably my favorite part of the entire afternoon.

 Papa posing with half of his mustache.  Isn't he so cute?  I love him!

 She looks serious, doesn't she?

 "Sarry Potter"--my kids don't know about Harry Potter, so they thought it was really odd that I had a crack down the middle of my forehead!

 Grammy got a flower while Addie observed, waiting for her turn.

 The YouTubed bun is still holding, 10 hours later!!

 Now it's Grammy's turn to draw on Leslie, and we didn't let Les choose her design:

 I can't tell you how much I love seeing my sister with a pig nose!  It's seriously unfair that she's still this cute, though.

 Then Leslie drew an Indian chief headband on Chris' head, since he was in and out of the house sneaking peeks of the Redskins game.  He's a diehard fan.

 He's so cute!  I love him, too!

 Finally Addie got her turn

 while the guys got busy carving pumpkins.  This was Caiden's first time doing his by himself, and he LOVED it.  Actually, the next morning he carved a few little ones left behind, he loved it so much!  I just think he liked getting to handle a knife.

 Fairy eyes for Addie,

 but my adorable niece Jae Beth opted out of makeup.

 Leslie and Landon made his pumpkin shirt, and

 Grayson had Mom paint his face silver with a red bolt down the side, to be some Star Wars person I can't remember, but when he realized that the silver was actually glitter, he ran inside and scrubbed it off!  He HATES anything remotely girl-related. So he ended up with a face with a red bolt and remnants of silver glitter :)

 My brother's pumpkin was awesome:  it was a fly fishing fly, really intricate, because he loves carving pumpkins and has years of experience!  But because I don't know anything about flies, I thought it was an armadillo!  Poor Dan.  He was so proud of it.

 Addie and Landon bowled with a pumpkin and paper towel ghosts,

 and my sister-in-law Janae held Superbaby Daniel, our newest family member.  I got to hold him for a long time and rock him to sleep, and he is sooo fat and cuddly!  It gives me baby cravings just to think of it . . .

 Addie and Jae Beth played with the pumpkin ring toss,

 while Les modeled our shirts which turned out really sweet.  They glow in the dark!

 After we finished all our outside activities, we all ate chili and orange cupcakes inside.  My parents brought the kids their treat bags, so they sucked down Pixie Sticks before Leslie and I intervened!  Then we all crashed in the great room.  It was hilarious because the kids changed out of their costumes, but all the adults still had their face makeup on.  My brother Dan had a full "beard" painted on by Leslie, and it was so funny but a little creepy.  See him in the left background?  Janae had just realized he was behind her and was laughing so hard at him!

Papa and Addie got in some good snuggles before we put the kids down and sat around talking, with coffee.

 Our little pumpkins glowing on the deck:

 Only my brother and sister know what this is, but I almost wet my pants laughing when it happened.  This is here simply for posterity!  Les, I'm sorry, but I had to post this.

 One more photo of Janae, who kindly let Caiden decorate her face (He drew hearts and "I love Dan" all over her), and tired JaeBeth.

 It was such a fun night, and I'm so thankful I have a creative sister who loves to make memories, or else we would've just eaten chili and had the kids trash the house.  This was so much more fun, and by playing outside all night, we ended up with sleepy kids, a clean house, and great memories!

And because there aren't nearly enough photos in this post ;), I saw this on Facebook and had to add it, simply because it's so cute: