Pumpkins and heat don't mix!

My last post was too long anyway, so I guess its good that I totally forgot to post about our pumpkin carving debacle! ha ha.  

I'll just post it now. 

The Man has been super busy studying for school, so usually its just me and the kids when we go to do anything. 

Pumpkin carving this year was no different. 

I was slightly stressing about it, since I knew I would be the one doing most of the gutting and carving. However, while the kids and I were looking for a pumpkin carving kit at walmart, we stumbled across a pumpkin gutting tool. I grabbed it up, hoping it would work as well as it was supposed to. Its basically a thick metal wisk looking thing that you stick into your drill and it digs out the guts for you and thins down the sides down for easier carving. 

Now I am not very familiar with power tools....

at all. 

I normally just use a screw driver and thats usually only to replace the batteries in something. 

So when we got this bad boy home and I went to put it into The Mans power drill...

I was totally lost. 

I had no idea how to get the current drill bit out and put this huge metal bit in! 

It was hilarious, all the kids surrounding me with their input on how not to kill myself. 

I eventually looked it up on google. ha ha! 

Once we got it put together, we all sat around the table anxiously waiting to see what would happen. I cut off the top of one of our pumpkins, stuck the huge metal tool in there and pushed the go button. 

It worked like a charm! Spinning and gutting and thinning..it was so awesome and took half the time it would have (if not more!) than if we had just used spoons! 

We just dumped it all out of the pumpkin straight into the trash.

Beautiful!

(Oh yeah, thats sexy...)

We got all of the guts out and each child picked their pattern. The Boy pretty much carved his own..which was a huge help to me, and I carved the other two for the girls. 

We were so excited to stick them out on the porch with our cool black candles we had purchased for inside.

The next morning I went outside to get the paper and noticed something horrible... 

our pumpkins had totally dried up and shriveled! 

They were ruined! 

I couldn't believe it.

 Of course, the temp here was still a scorching 100 degrees, so it makes sense. 

I didn't even think about that! 

In Idaho its cold in October and keeps them refrigerated. ha ha. 

The kids were pretty bummed, but we had fun anyway. 

A good lesson learned for next year. Carve your pumpkins the day of halloween! 

halloween festivities-2011 style

We have had bunch of activities to go to this year. Its amazing actually, since normally halloween for our family is pretty low key. We usually just go to the trunk-or-treat at our church and call it good. 

I don't even decorate. 

I know, lame. 

I don't know why. 

Maybe I'm just not all that into scary stuff accumulating around my house. Plus, I discovered that baby girl is almost deathly afraid of all things halloween related. I took her into one of those Spirit costume stores and there was a display of a loudly moaning fake man who was half eaten by a huge rubber rat. It was pretty gross, and it freaked baby girl out...ever since then, she can't even look at a ghost without wanting to run away!

So any who, our first outing for halloween was the Boo Bash put on by the dental school. I kind of dreaded going, as it takes about 45 minutes to drive into where it was and I knew there would be some questionable costume choices and drinking. However, they had a bunch of stuff for the kids to do, lots of candy and we even got to dance. It was a pretty fun night and I was actually impressed with a lot of the clever costume ideas that people came up with. 

here are a few pics of us...can you guess what we are? :)

(wheres Waldo!? ha ha)

The kids loved the big bounce house and all the candy and pop floating around. (of course)

bowling... (my kids are the witch, the storm trooper and a bat ballerina!)  :)

The loot

Baternina

The boy took most of our pictures for us. He loves our little digital camera. I talked him into going around and taking pics of his favorite costumes, this is what he came up with:

He loved this one! She is the house from Up and you can barely see Mr. Fredricksen on the left. The Boy said he just wanted a picture of her. :)

We had a great time, but I sure was tired when we got home!

The next night we had our trunk or treat. I didn't get any pics of us there. :( but here are the pics I took of the kids in their costumes before hand. Some of their faces are so hilarious. And The boy totally takes the whole storm trooper thing so seriously. 

We had fun, but right as soon as we got home and put the kids to bed...I got slapped by the worst cold/flu I have ever experienced! 

ugh, I feel like a bus ran me over. 

Plus, The Man, the boy and baby girl all have colds as well. 

So we are pretty miserable to say the least. 

We are hoping to have somewhat recovered by tonight to go trick or treating around the neighborhood, something we haven't been able to do for a really long time. 

Though, I think Im more excited about it that the kids are!

exploring

When we moved here to Arizona it was sunny and 120 degrees outside...all day every day. 

So, even though it was the middle of summer, it felt like we were back to Idaho winters due to the fact that we had to stay inside and couldn't really go out. 

It was so crazy to me to have to turn on my car for the air conditioner to cool it off before we could get in it to go anywhere. 

We had to stare out our windows at the back yard and the park right next door longingly. The kids asked if they could go outside to play ALL THE TIME. It was sad to have to say no.

Although we were told cool weather did exist here, we were inclined to not believe it. It was too hot to ever imagine it not being so! 

However, during the last month or so the temperature has finally started to feel less brutal. The car thermometer has begrudgingly given up about 20 degrees and I think we are also acclimating, which helps. 

The last few weeks of this October have lingered in the high 90's but a couple of weeks ago there was a rare few days where it was actually nice enough during the evening for the kids and I to venture out around the city and try out some places we had seen out the car windows during our summer hibernation. 

One place we really wanted to visit was the duck pond right next to the library. Its a man made fishing pond that is stocked about every week. 

(Im told residents here really do eat the fish they catch...after this post is over you might understand why I say the word...ew) 

We packed a picnic dinner, some old bread for the ducks and we headed over. 

I had insisted the kids wear sandals, since it was beachy and thought they might like to take them off and play in the water. 

(The ducks there had absolutely no fear of the kids, they came right up to them!)

Man, was that a mistake!

After about five minutes of being there, we realized most of the "beach" was covered in duck poop!  I swear about 5 feet from the edge of the water and up was pure green slime. 

Their feet got covered and it was all I could do not to freak out or puke every time they tried to move around.  They were sliding in it and falling. yuck! we tried to wash our feet in the pond, but it was pointless. 

Oh, and not to mention the dead fish hanging out everywhere. 

So after our bread ran out we thought it would be best to get away from the water front and check out what else the park had to offer. We also looked for some grass to try to wipe as much poop off as we could!

There were a few fun things along the beach. Baby girl had just biffed it in the sand about one minute prior tot this picture, so she is not very happy! ha ha

We finally cam upon an awesome palyground that was so much more fun (in my mind) than the slimy, poopy duck water. 

 We stayed until dark and got some Ice cream on the way home. 

It was fun to hang out, but we sure miss our daddy sometimes. 

He is just so busy studying, its insane.

So, we find things to do to pass the time. 

Today the temperature is in the mid 70's and it feels amazing. I can finally start to see why some people would want to live here permanently. If it stayed this nice all year, I might consider it. 

Unfortunately, I know too much about the hell heat to ever be so deceived. :)