Halloween!

Since we live near no neighbors...we went to a friends' house to trick or treat. 

Gage's Halloween party

Parents were not invited to the 3rd grade party...but we were invited to the 1st grade party!  Here is Mrs. Nau, Gage's teacher...

Here is the whole class..except Gage's buddy Matty. Apparently his parents decided he should stay home because he's allergic to peanuts and they worried there would be beanie candies at the party.

This is gage getting ready to play who's the ghost - one kids went out into her hallway, and gage curled up on the floor and Mrs Nau covered him with a sheet. When she came back in she had to guess who was the ghost.  It too her firever and gage was sweltering when he came out of hiding.

After games...it was time for cookies, treats, and crafts.

On campus trick or treat

One perk of college campuses is that tr big kids love to give out candy to the little kids. We have Harry Potter and a vampire!

The dorms had different themes. This was frozen complete with a guy dressed in white (Olaf) with sticky tape wrapped around his belly that the kids threw snowballs (cotton balls) at and tried to get them to stick. Gotta love college kids.

Another dorm was a spy theme. They made soy if cards and crawled through a laser maze

!

They had foosball ghosts, Frankie, and all sorts of fun stuff!

Added bonus..it was a gorgeous night!

Whoa!

Whoa, that's a big leaf!

Pumpkin patch!

Time was running short to get to a pumpkin patch, so luckily the rain ended and we made it today. First up was the corn maze. They had a mystery built into the maze (who stole the hens eggs), so you had to find hint stations along the way to rule out the suspects. They argued at every.single.one about who would use the hole punch on our card. We take turns guys :-/

We fed goats. They had the best names. Coconut. Macadamia nut. Cocoa. Caramel.

They also got to practice milking cows ;-)

And finally, we made it to the pumpkin patch.

Homecoming

It was homecoming recently, and we started with a Bloody Mary bar at a friends ' house. We ended up piling into our car - with the dean squished in the backseat with me, Jess, and the 2 kids!

The first "person" we bumped into was Rufus!

Next up..the parade

Which was...

Really fun

Full of random groups like the zombie squad...Bernie sanders supporters...sororities, and..shellfish?

Next up....playing on the big slides...a little tailgating...and the game

 

Followed by...smores!!

Go Gage

Well, gage is coming into his own when it comes to schoolwork. He had his first math test 2 weeks ago (100%), and his first spelling test last week..and yes...

He got 100% on this test too..AND..he aced all of the challenge words...which he has never seen before! 

Although last year involved a lot of whining and crying at homework time...this year, he just does his work and moves on. Yes! Yes! Yes! :-)

this and that around the house

Well, the ugly worn out old brown barn has been painted a nice, bright barn red. We also added diagonal accept beams to the front porch, which everyone agrees...look amazing!

 

Playset

Adam and Jess spent a few weekends building this awesome playset for the kids. It's not quite finished, but it's quite the contraption!!  We have a rope ladder that is hanging from the monkey bars "wrangler style" --it's not attached to the ground, so when they climb it, it swings all around, which apparently is very fun ;-)

 It also makes for a great spot to  hang upside down for extended periods of time...

 We still have some railings to add, and possibly a roof of some kind to make their "fort" more "fort-like", but....for now...they still have an awesome area to play.

 And...we even found a use for the gazillion rock climbing holds that Adam bought when he was in living in Texas (and we have been lugging all around the country).  A built-in rock climbing wall!