Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween from the Hays Family!

We started our morning with homemade orange colored chocolate chip pancakes. They were a big hit!

After lunch, and while Naomi took a nap, we carved two pumpkins. Micah and Jacob both designed the face for one of them.

After the pumpkins were carved it was time to get into our costumes. The town we live in was having "Trick or Treat on 3rd street" which is one of the main streets in the town. You could go trick or treating in all the shops. I let Naomi wear some make-up which she loved.

It started raining when we were going into all the stores but we hung in there. We were surprised to see how many people came out, it was really fun. This was Naomi's first Halloween but it did not take her long to get the hang of it. Micah and Jacob were so sweet coaching her what to do.

Naomi was Cinderella, Micah was a Mad Scientist and Jacob was Frankenstein that Micah created.

After going to the stores we met up with some neighborhood friends to trick or treat around our neighborhood. We were all amazed at this huge leaf that Naomi found! It was pretty cold and a little drizzly. All the kids had an undershirt, shirt and sweatshirt under their costume. People in our neighborhood were very generous, giving each kid 3-5 pieces of candy. Before we knew it their pumpkins were full!

One thing that was new here is that almost all the houses in our neighborhood are split level which means you have to walk up a flight of stairs to get to the front door. Naomi really had to work to get to each door to get her candy and she was wiped out by the end.

Our friend let Naomi hold her flashlight and she was fascinated with it. She spent a lot of time in one spot examining things on the ground. We had to teach her not to shine it in people's eyes. At one point we told her put it on the ground, meaning the light, but she stopped walking and put the whole flashlight on the ground!

After we got home and warmed up with baths it was time to sort through our candy. We got 2 big bowls full!

Hope you had a great Halloween!

Happy Halloween

Naomi's First Caramel Apple

Jake finds his pumpkin

Naomi finds her pumpkin

Pumpkin Pickin'

Today it was time to go find our pumpkins! We first went to Foster's Produce. It was a pretty run down looking place and dirty but we got a few pictures. The highlight was definitely the fuzzy caterpillar that we found that is now in our living room in a glass jar.

We did not get any pumpkins there and decided to drive down the road to another farm called Garden Treasures. It was so much nicer and had an added bonus-it was an organic farm.

We were also very excited to find out that we could go out to the field and pick our own pumpkins, just what we wanted. So we found a cart and headed out to the fields!

Everyone found exactly the pumpkin they were looking for. When we got to the check out they were so cheap, we got a few more plus some gourds for $.50 each. We spent a total of $11.50.

We have been having a lot of rain lately so we were so happy that we had a chilly but dry afternoon!

Caramel Apples

Today the kids and I made Caramel Apples for the first time. The turned out great and it was so fun watching Naomi eat her first caramel apple and Jake trying to eat it with all of his teeth missing!

The tree in our front yard

Kelly and Max

Today we were so blessed to see our dear friends from Hawaii, Kelly and Max. Kelly and her husband John traveled with me to Africa to adopt their son, Max. Kelly's sister lives about 20 minutes from us. Kelly flew out to see her family and celebrate her niece's birthday. We were invited to the party which was at the Everett's Children's Museum.

I think that Max and Naomi will always have a special bond because they shared some many experiences together. They were sharing food and Naomi was always making sure Max kept his mouth clean!

The museum itself was AWESOME, we will be back for sure. On the roof they had these cool play structures, dinosaur area and music making area.

Inside it is all interactive and hands on. They had an airplane, farm area, trains, restaurant, water play area and more!

We loved every minute of it and the time we got to spend with Kelly and Max. They are like family to us and we love them dearly. They are the first people we have seen that we know since we moved to Washington and it was so hard to say goodbye without any tears.

Bake a treat with Mom

Here are the finished products of Jacob's reward of Baking a treat with mom. We used Grandma Cowherd's sugar cookie and butter cream recipes. She is my sister-in-law, Laura's, mom. We made pumpkins, ghosts and bats. They are delicious!