Trick or treat

Caroline was really into Halloween this year. She had a costume party at school on Wednesday and got more candy than she did trick-or-treating tonight. We did some fun crafts here at home to celebrate. We carved pumpkins and even painted two little ones. I planned a spooky meal - mummy dogs, witch fingers, cobwebs, and ghost cakes. I was pretty pleased with myself over the silly meal plan. She had a great time saying, "Trick or treat! Happy Halloween!" at all the neighbors' houses. And then our little kitty helped hand out candy to the other kids.

I'm not sure how many trick-or-treaters we had this year. We always get a ton. Kevin got 1200 pieces of candy and gave out all of it - mostly two pieces at a time. I think he was a little more generous toward the end of the night.

Overall, it was such a fun Halloween for all three of us!

Little helper

Caroline helped me make pumpkin bread. Then she kindly offered to do the dishes.

Itsy bitsy

Are you sick of the singing yet? I might find an agent and see if we can cut an album.

More singing

I never tire of hearing her sing. Good thing she does it a lot these days!

Lazy daisy crazy

Here is Caroline's fall dress - finally finished! Hooray! I started working on it back in July, but then that pesky first trimester hit and I could hardly muster up enough energy to make dinner, let alone smock. When fall arrived, I kicked it into high-gear to get it done. I finished it last night, just in time for church today. I am very proud of the sunflower dress. Here's a little math problem for you: there are 32 sunflowers on the dress. Each sunflower is made up of 10 lazy daisy stitches. That equals 320 lazy daisies. Yikes.

This is the back of the dress. This is one of my favorite dress patterns because of the back.

Yes, it was a very sad morning for some reason. She was not going to smile at all.


I think she'll wear it to church every Sunday until Advent!

Punkin patch

We took Caroline to a real pumpkin patch this year. It was so much fun and the pumpkins were very reasonably priced (much more so than at the "patches" in town). She loved looking for little ones just for her. But my favorite thing has to be that she says "punkin"!

Overheard

Kevin was playing with Caroline while she was in the bath. Caroline said, "Daddy! I'm trying to do some serious work here!"

What a goof! I wish playing in the bath were my serious work!

Big girl bed

St. Louis

We had a really great time last weekend in St. Louis with Kevin's sister, Emily. We did Grant's Farm Saturday morning. Then Aunt Emmy took Caroline to Build-a-Bear, where Caroline built a tiger. Apparently once the stuffing was in, Caroline immediately wanted to do a bear. Saturday night we had a wonderful meal on The Hill with Emily's boyfriend and his parents. I don't remember the restaurant, but the food was really good. Sunday, we took Caroline to the zoo, which was just as neat as I remembered. It's a huge zoo, so we'll have to go back to take in all the areas we didn't get to.

My camera battery died the minute we arrived, so all these photos are courtesy of Emily. Thanks, Em!

Creativity

Caroline woke up one morning and her first order of business was building a nest. She kept talking about eggs and baby birds and nests. So we helped her fashion a nest out of blankies and gave her an Easter egg. She was so happy with her little nest. She played in it all day. I'm amazed at the workings of her little brain. We've never really talked about baby birds being in eggs. I'm guessing it's something she got from Word World. Regardless, I hope I am doing my best to foster her young, creative spirit. (And she had said egg started with "E" 2 seconds before I took the video - stage fright!)


Remember when Caroline liked a nest of a different variety?