Happy Halloween!

We had a very fun and busy Halloween weekend. Wednesday, October 26th we carved pumpkins with Sophie. She had a great time but was not interested in sticking her hand in the pumpkin to pull out seeds. She doesn't like her hands to get messsy. Sophie wanted to help Daddy with the cutting. She wanted to play with the carving knife. She helped Jon cut out the nose, and then she just wanted to play with the nose. She'd put it back in and then push it out and put back. I think she did that for a few minutes until Jon convinced her to let him finish cutting out the rest of the face. She also helped Daddy by putting the carving knife in over and over where Jon had already cut. She wanted to be sure it was cut all the way through.

The finished product. My pumpkin is the one on the left and Sophie and Daddy's pumpkin is on the right.

Thursday, Oct 27th our good friends Ben and Karen Divine came to visit us for the weekend. They used to live here in Mankato, but they moved when Ben graduated. We had such a fun time having them here. We ate so much food and played lots of games. We went to Yu's for lunch on Friday and to ToKen for breakfast on Saturday. Saturday evening was the ward's Trunk-or-Treat. Past years the youth have been in charge of all the games, but this year the honor was given to the Primary. I volunteered to be in charge of the cupcake walk, which is why we don't have very many pictures of Sophie at the carnival. Mandy forgot her camera, so she borrowed mine and I asked her to take a few pictures of Sophie. This is a funny picture, but it's Sophie and Elsie standing near the cupcake walk. They participated for a few minutes and they were off to more exciting things. Jon and Adam spoiled the girls and let each of them have a cupcake without winning. After the carnival, we went outside for the trunk-or-treat. Jon handed out candy while I took Sophie around. She did so well even though she didn't really understand what was going on. The weather was nice and not too cold, which made for a fun trunk-or-treat.

Sophie has been completely fixated with pumpkins this year. Every time we get out of the car, she has to go to the front door to see her pumpkins. The night we carved pumpkins she didn't have her Cutest Pumpkin in the Patch shirt on, so I took her outside on Halloween so that I could get a few pictures of her with the pumpkins. Her favorite thing was to pull the tops off the pumpkins. By Halloween, the top of my pumpkin had shrunk so much it wouldn't stay on. Sophie loved it when I lit the candles inside the pumpkins, she tried to stick her hand in to feel the heat from the flame. Yes, my child is a pyro! She is obsessed with fire, matches and candles. We have scented candles that we burn in the house and she constantly wants to go over to the candle and put her hand over the flame. She says "ha, ha" for "hot, hot" which is what we told her. Now she wants to do it all the time. The other day she found some matches in my bathroom and she took out a match and I saw her scraping the match along the box trying to light the match just like Mommy does. Oh dear! Luckily she can't quite get it to work, but I'm sure one of these days she'll figure it out. I better keep all matches and candles up high so she can't get to them.

Pictures of my cute little pumpkin in her pumpkin shirt. I would have to agree with the saying on her shirt, she truly is the cutest pumpkin in the patch. Thanks grandpa for the cute shirt!

She got on the rock all by herself and at one point she ended up falling backwards onto her head. She didn't get hurt, but it sure upset her. Luckily Daddy was walking down the trail on his way home from work, so she didn't cry for long.

Sophie was a cute little dragon for Halloween. I wasn't planning on having her be a dragon, but our friends the Jeffreys had given us the costume when Tanner grew out of it. When we got out our Halloween decorations I saw the costume, so I tried it on her and it looked so cute that I decided to use it. She was the cutest little dragon I've ever seen.

We took Sophie trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. Our friends the Judsons and the Andersons met us at our house at 6:30 and we met up with the Parkers on the way to their house. The weather was beautiful all day and the temperature was probably close to 50 degrees when we went out. I don't think Sophie was quite sure what was going on, but she seemed to have fun. About half way through, her hands and cheeks were getting cold, so we came home. When we got home the Jeffreys were just pulling in to the driveway. When everyone finished trick-or-treating, they came over to our house for some hot chocolate, hot cider, doughnuts and cookies. We had a fun evening with friends. Halloween is a lot more fun when you have a little one to celebrate with. Next year hopefully I'll be on the ball and Jon and I will dress up with Sophie.