Happy Birthday, Joel

We didn't see a whole lot of Joel today because he was at school studying and taking tests for most of the day. But when he did get home we promptly opened presents and cards and sang Happy Birthday!

Here he is with his "cake". Joel doesn't like cake all that much, and when I asked him what kind of cake (or brownies, or cheesecake, or pie) he wanted this year he replied something like, "Nothing." Well, we weren't going to stand for that, so we made rice crispy treats.

He needed help with his candles...

Happy Birthday, Joel! We love you!

Halloween!

We started out our Halloween festivities by carving pumpkins on Monday for Family Home Evening. Joel and I bought pumpkins for ourselves, but we didn't end up carving them because it was getting late. We did help the kids do theirs, though.

Will decided to do a small pumpkin, and we learned that it's a little trickier to clean them out, especially when I don't cut the hole in the top big enough to get my hand inside it. :) Thankfully my husband is pretty much an expert pumpkin cleaner outer, so no worries! Will drew the picture he wanted right on his pumpkin and I helped him carve it.
Adam just colored on his pumpkin. Then he had a good time carrying it around with him for the rest of the night.

Joel helped Jenna carve hers and it looked pretty cool all lit up; not that you can tell in this picture.

And I just included this one because I think Adam is super cute.

Saturday was full of Halloween fun. Jenna and Will got to go to a birthday party for our neighbor and friend. They wore their costumes and had a spooky good time!

Saturday evening we went to our ward trunk-or-treat party. They served dinner, had games (Joel was a champ helping out with the cake walk), a haunted house, and then the trunk-or-treat. Here are the kiddos before we headed out...

Jenna was a monster, Adam was Superboy, and Will was a doctor.

Jenna looks unenthused on purpose: it wouldn't do for a monster to look happy.

With some help from my sister, Mary, I made Will's scrubs. With no pattern, may I add. I am far from an expert seamstress, and I'm extremely pleased with how they turned out. I don't know about you, but I would definitely take medical advise from such a handsome doctor!

Here you can see Jenna's scary monster spines.

We had a lovely time at the ward party. Joel walked around with the kids while I handed out candy. After they were gone for a little while, Will suddenly appeared back at the van and said, "I think I have enough candy. Dad said I could come sit with you." So he chilled with me in the back of the van and helped me hand out candy. It was great!

The kids got a lot of compliments on their costumes. We saw some pretty cool and crazy costumes! The most impressive was probably the guy dressed up as the Mad Hatter (from the new Alice in Wonderland). His wife was the rabbit, and their daughter was Alice. There was also a guy who was a youtube video, entitled "This is was awesome is..." or something like that. There were at least 5 pairs of Mario and Luigi, and two other little supermen that were about the same size as Adam. Thankfully we brought home the right superhero.

We had a very Happy Halloween!