Costume Party

This morning the kids and I headed to the church of a Costume Party/Visiting Teaching get-together. We thought we'd accomplish our usual visiting teaching routine with a twist to help the kids have more fun and get excited for Halloween. Plus it was a great practice run for the costumes. We had 12 kids in total and costumes galore. They colored halloween pictures; ate cookies and drank juice boxes; Kristen planned a variation of musical chairs by having the kids stand on a halloween picture every time the music stopped. Since all the kids were pretty young and we didn't want to create any tears, we decided to avoid the elimination that usual accompanies musical chairs. We also had a bowling game where the kids bowled down empty juice boxes with mini pumpkins. All in all, we had a great time. Max got pretty tired toward the end and just layed on the gym floor. He got pretty hopped up on chocolate chip cookies that it was hard to tell he was tired on the way home as he yelled mountain calls into his rubber boot. We're looking forward to trick-or-treating with Emma on Friday.

Jack-o-Lantern

This evening we participated in what is becoming a tradition in our household...carving the halloween pumpkins the Monday before Halloween. The talk of pumpkins has been in our house for weeks now, but since I don't like the smell of rotten things, and I much less like to touch rotten things, I have insisted that we wait until the week of before we got pumpkins and carved them. We've done a fairly good job in the past (I think), trying our hand at Haunted Houses, Nemo, a Cat, and Dora.
We always like to stylize our pumpkin to match either what the kids are going to be for halloween, or something they're really interested at the time. Our first year, Lucy was obsessed with Dora.
Last year, she was a kitty-cat for Halloween so we tried our hand at that, as well as the Nemo pumpkin. So this year, Lucy has decided of all the Disney Princesses, she wants to be Tinkerbell (not because it's her favorite, by the way, because if you ask her, she'd say Cinderella, but because the costume came with wings). So we agreed to a tinkerbell pumpkin.
Max is going to be a fireman (salute Uncle Trevor), but he is so into the movie "Cars" right now, that we decided to have a Lightening McQueen pumpkin.
He really wanted Mater, but I couldn't find a template. I went to a website called zombiepumpkins.com to download the templates and found so many cool ones that we decided to do an extra pumpkin. This one is more in homage to the Mike and Tam-e Bourne family, but we thought it had a halloween theme to it.
So those are our finished products. Carving pumpkins with the kids really consists of them watching a movie while Tyler and I carve, but they love seeing the process and the results. And for some reason Lucy was obsessed with the pumpkin innards this year...what a strange little girl.

Hawaii 5-0

Today was Papa's 50th Birthday. The kids had a fun time getting picture ready for him and wrapping his present. Lucy colored a picture of a birthday cake for Papa with a big 50 on the top, and Max colored a giraffe. Then they put his new movie: "The Apple Dumpling Gang" and "The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides again" into a box along with their pictures. We headed up to Grandma and Papa's house for a birthday dinner made by Auntie Ali and spent a few quick minutes with everyone up there before they all headed their separate ways. Lucy and I also made a quick Rice Krispie Square cake for papa, since no one is a huge fan of cake at our house.
Papa also got some new tools from his kids and Grandma, which really looks like an invitation for more work, but hopefully this will make that work easier.
When all was said and done, everyone headed out to their vehicles to go to their different meetings and activities when Grandma called everyone to come and see the sky. This beautiful artwork was a nice cap to Papa's big day.
Sometimes I am so amazed by the view out here on our piece of heaven. I wish I could take a picture everyday, because it's constantly changing and if I ever have to leave, I never want to forget it.
Here's also a few pictures of the kids in their new jammies (Lucy's trying to help Max make a funny face). It makes me nostalgic for Christmas. Max was so excited to see Lucy this morning that he ran down the hallway to give her a big hug.
I hope they're always best friends. Even as I type this, they are playing pass with a small basketball right behind me. Papa's other grandson wasn't able to participate much in his birthday, except to stand there and look cute...but he does a really good job at that.

A-MAZE-ING

To get our Thanksgiving long-weekend off to a good start, we decided to join some members of the Bourne-extended family and go to Calgary's Corn Maze.  (Side note, it is located east of Deerfoot on Hwy 22x, so I don't really think it's fair to call it 'Calgary's" corn maze...it took us an hour and a half to get there).  The kids were pretty excited to spend some time with Emma, and I think she enjoys spending time with them.  I loaded tons of warm clothing and snacks and two kids into our van and headed out for the afternoon.  As mentioned before, it took about an hour and a half to get there after stopping at my parent's to drop off some tools for the drywalling that was happening there (they have a different way of celebrating Thanksgiving weekend), and getting stuck in construction.  Once we got there, we bundled up, paid our entrance fee, and headed straight to the 'pumpkin patch'.  The patch was actually bare, but they had laid out all the pumpkins in a pile for people to choose from, and the kids enjoyed looking.  We were a little later getting there than everyone else, so we headed into the maze.  Lucy was our fearless leader and decided which path we should take.  At one point we came across a sign that let you choose the 'adventurous' or 'leisurely' trail.  Here the kids are debating which way to go, but quickly decided adventurous.  

 We soon found out that adventurous meant the path was less visible as it was covered with fallen down corn stalks.  The maze was actually quite fun and provided some shelter for the icy wind, so we spent a lot of time in there.  We learnt that the maze is usually 9-feet tall, but after the terrible windstorm that blew through last week, it had cut most of the stalks in half.  It worked out well because the kids were short enough to still feel the affects of the maze, but the parents were able to lead with a bit more ease.  We also came across a few scarecrows along the way.  

We had a hot dog lunch at a fire pit with Joe & Erica and their two little ones, Malauney, Aunt Leah, and Tammy and her girls.  Once we were fueled up, we headed back into the maze with Tammy, Emma and Ashley.  Emma was determined to stay miles ahead of us and Tammy kept having to call her back.  Eventually we made it through the maze, although we never did leave through the exit.  The first time we ended up exiting the entrance and the second time through we ended up at some side bar vortex that lead us out, but wasn't really part of the maze.   We had a quick stop at the "Corn" sign so the kids could each get a picture. 

 It was difficult to get Max with his hood, but he participated happily.  

This is about the only thing he did happily (besides eating his hotdog) as he made me carry him through the whole maze.  Here's a picture of him walking on his own, but if you look closely, his bottom lip tells you that he's not happy about it.  

We've decided we'll go again next year, only we'll go earlier in the season so it's not quite so cold.  Thanks to Malauney for organizing the outing.  She does a good job at keeping our large family in touch.  

Fun and Fancy Free

Lucy got a lot of jewelry and princess garb for her birthday and every once a while (more often then not, lately) she dresses up and convinces her brother to join in. He usually whines and complains because he wants to do something different, and she usually ends up frustrated or in tears because he's not playing her game. But as soon as she's gone, he will do whatever it is that she wanted him to do, as long as she's not looking. Here is Max in one such moment.
He put on the princess crown that Lucy had been playing with earlier and then insisted that his dad put on the other one. Lucy was showing us how you could tell the difference between a daughter, a mom (someone who wears a wedding ring), a princess (someone with a crown) and a queen (someone with a crown and a ring).
Another game Lucy likes to convince Max to play is dressing up to get ready for 'the dance'. They've never actually gone to the dance as Max enjoys putting on mom's shoes with Lucy and all the activities involved in 'getting ready' which includes brushing their hair, etc, but he always looses interest when it comes time to dance, so Lucy never has a dancing partner. Here they are in their proud 'dance' costumes.
These costumes usually consist of mom's shoes and some fake flowers.