Halloween

Michelle got really in to Halloween this year. I think she was most excited about getting to carry her pumpkin :)
I felt like the bumble bee really paid homage to a few certain pictures I remember in the Sampson photo albums ;)
We had a ward Trunk or Treat on Wed. and then on Friday we took her to a few houses in the neighborhood.

She even said "Trick or Treat" about 50% of the time this year.

We survived!

Most people don't realize that theatre teacher wife is synonymous with free labor. Last weekend was Joe's first high school play, he's done a couple at a middle school but this was different. I don't know that it was more work necessarily just different. And ya know I was 34 weeks pregnant with a toddler in tow and the school is 30 min away.

He put on "See How They Run" which is a favorite of his thanks to the many years of it at Playmill. For high schoolers they did pretty good ;) I'm hopeful that the program will grow over time. One bummer was that we didn't get any parent involvement despite trying to get it which meant it was all on us. Joe built and painted the set with the kids, I did all the costuming, and all the programing etc. We also decided to try concessions this time to see if that could boost what we brought back in which meant that I did a lot of baking.

I think that the most stressful thing was having NO clue what the turn out would be as far as attendance. The teacher last year didn't really do traditional productions and we didn't even have numbers from what she did so everything was a total shot in the dark. We just ran with it hoping to get close to breaking even and knowing that we were at least doing something for improving the reputation of the program.
I also took care of ticket and concessions sales for the first night (with Michelle in tow) and got them in a grove for the next couple nights.
Overall it was a very successful first show and the compliments were genuine. Apparently there were several kids who didn't enjoy their drama experience last year and after this show they regretted quitting drama ;)

Pumpkin Patch 2014

I guess this is a tradition for us now because this is the third year that we have gone to the Linder Farms Pumpkin Patch. It is a fun activity and we go on half price admission night (with Michelle still being free) so as long as we are reasonable with our pumpkin choices it turns out to be a fairly inexpensive family activity.
It was fun to see how much more into it Michelle was this year, she wanted to point out all the big pumpkins and the little pumpkins and the ones that had gotten squashed by the tractor. She was not however, interested in stopping two seconds for a picture ;)
She was also very concerned about her pumpkin the 3-4 times she fell and dropped/ landed on it. Thankfully it was a sturdy little thing ;)

 Does it get any cuter than these two? I'll let you know in a couple months ;)

The next week for FHE we painted our pumpkins. For some strange reason Joe had never done this. I am certain that I have painted more pumpkins in my life than I have carved. It didn't exactly work out as I had envisioned but.. oh well. Joe outlined the letter B using a red pen....don't do that if you are painting with cream and glitter. And I taped a chevron pattern on Michelle's with masking tape so that she could just go to town painting and I could still get a pretty cute pumpkin out of it :) good idea but I must have bought the wrong paint because it wanted to peel right off of the pumpkin- I don't remember that problem growing up.

But they still look pretty cute I think, besides they are on the ground by the front door so hopefully people aren't looking that closely ;)