A Lot of Fall Fun

I hope you like looking at pictures.  Because I have a lot for you!

We do the Halloween thing.  Chris and I both grew up doing the Halloween thing.  I've studied a bit about the origins of Halloween, and I don't like them.  But I admit, it's hard to know whether God is looking down on my family and frowning in sadness that we are having fun doing the same sort of thing that is against Him or laughing at the silliness of our kids dressing up in fun costumes, playing fun games, and having fun collecting candy.  We don't do the scary stuff, and we have talked with the older kids about why other people do the scary stuff and why we don't.  We say "Happy Halloween" instead of "Trick or Treat".  I don't know if that makes a difference and I totally get why some people don't participate at all.  That said, we still do the Halloween thing.

Chris does the pumpking carving thing with them.

Christopher wanted to have a seed counting contest.

On Halloween eve, our church had a "Trunk or Treat".  They had church members decorate their trunks and hand out candy.  There was a hay ride and hotdogs and jumpy castles.  And there was my kids, having a blast.

We went to the Ford Family Farm that weekend also.  More games, hay rack and tractor barrell rides, scare crow decortaing, pumpkin pictures, farm animals, haystack obstacle courses, and corn digging boxes.

I got crafty and made a Halloween dinner.  Pumpkin Meat Pie and Mac & Cheese Monsters.  I think I thought it was cooler than the boys did.  Just because they didn't want to eat the meat pie.

On Halloween evening, we went to another local church for games and candy.  It was so fun to watch four of our kids playing the games together!  Leah did a great job keeping up with her brothers.  The church had a fun Texas theme for their games.  A cowboy boot toss, riding blow-up cattle, lassoing steers, etc...

We went home with enough time for Chris to take the four older kids out to collect candy.  There weren't many other kids out anymore since it was a bit late, and the kids all got a lot of candy in the short amount of time they were out.

Later, in November, we drove past San Antonio to the Corn Maize park.  We went into the maze but ended up not being able to find our way out, and the boys were planning to go to the airshow on Lackland AFB that afternoon, so we had to find out way out back through the entrance. 

Christopher looking out over the maze couldn't even help us find our way to the exit!

The kids playing in a big tube slide.  Leah took forever to get up to the top of the stairs...sorry to all those kids behind her in line! 

Happy Fall!

Gabe's Turning 5!

Okay, so I'm just going to start from now and not going to try to catch up.  It just seemed so overwhelming to try, that I never ended up doing anything!

So, onto what's going on this week...my baby boy is turning FIVE!  His actual birthday is Tuesday but we celebrated with his friends yesterday. 

I cannot describe fully what joy I felt at seeing him so happy at the end of the day.  Having two older brothers and two younger sisters sticks him smack dab in the middle and very rarely in a family of five children does one get 100% of the attention and love.  That's why God invented birthdays.

After much deliberation, Gabe decided to have a monster truck party.  Even though he's more on the quiet side around his friends at church (pretty much the only place he has friends), he still had a long list of kids on his invitation list.  We ended up with 24 kids but it was a beautiful day outside, so they had a lot of room to run around and use their energy in non-destructive ways!

Gabe was really excited when we were coming up with games to play in our party planning.  This game was a big hit with the kids...racing with spoonfuls of dirt to see which team could fill their pot up first.

We had plenty of monster truck toys to decorate with and Gabriel was thrilled with house the house looked once we tied balloons to some and set them up around the house.

The kids played a "Pass the Monster Truck" game, similar to "Hot Potato". 

This is what a happy boy looks like!

The cake decorator of the family is Chris, and he did a great job as usual. 

Racing monster trucks with his friends...

I didn't think we'd get a group picture with so many kids, but aside from two babies, we got all the kids (and one dad). 

And of course a silly picture to let the kids show their true sides...

At the end of the party, when all his friends had gone, he was still grinning ear to ear.  I loved seeing Gabriel feel so happy and special.