Halloween is so much fun!

Jake’s fourth grade class was asked to come up with a costume for a vegetable for a class assignment this year.  We kind of forgot about it until morning of (awesome).  Sometimes I do my best thinking when I’m under pressure.  I thought the “Mummy carrot” was pretty darn cute!  Jake dressed as Harry Potter was off to school on time……

Costumes:  So Cole relates to the Hulk pretty well.  His whole third year of life was devoted to honing his Incredible Hulk skills I swear.  It was not the easiest year for him nor I.  He gets angry pretty easily and kind of flies off the handle without much provoking and turns into Hulk junior.  Hitting and screaming sometimes biting!  We just keep reminding ourselves that one day we will laugh at this and look BACK on it.  So the perfect costume for him this year was definitely the Hulk. 

 

Carter and Hanna had a lot of fun this year dressing up!  For the base activities this is what they came up with:  These awesome ZOMBIES!  They were kind of shocked when I told them that it was acceptable this year since I’ve kind of had a no creepy costumes rule for years.  I think kids should be lots of OTHER things first before they move on to the gory stuff.  Carter was even more shocked when I told him it was okay to cut these jeans up for the cause.  It’s so easy to shock my children!  As soon as we arrived on base at Donnelly Park these two were off on their own.  Its so nice that they are so close in age and get along so well.  They are becoming really good friends again now that they are both in Middle school together. 

The base puts on a huge party on Donnelly Fields.  They have hotdogs, popcorn, trunk or treating (what a Zoo however!), A giant jumbo screen playing the Charlie Brown Halloween special, and games for the little kids.  Trick or Treating in the neighborhoods on base was really fun this year too.  It is more American style except the houses are duplexes and really close together so it means you get to grab candy even faster from each house!  I think the candy just circulates….they ask people to bring candy bags and give it to the houses that are handing it out and then I swear the candy from their kids’ bags goes back in the bowl that they hand out.  Its like a giant CANDY CYCLE of suckers and chocolate.  Its awesome no one complains! 

 

Jake went as Harry Potter this year (fitting since this was his Harry Potter year for his birthday and reading the books!), and Josh dressed up as Captain America from Avengers.  He’s just so dang cute in this costume.  I LOVE my kiddos.  It was nice to have a break from matching costumes and from buying costumes.  I offered, but only Josh took me up on it this year.  Everyone else wanted to do their own thing or use stuff we already owned.  Easy Peasy…..and cheap! 

 

After we did all the base activities and Trick or Treated the base housing neighborhoods, we headed back home to drop off the little boys and mom for bed.  Then Dad and the two Zombie kiddos headed back to base for the Haunted Tent city in the forest.  Apparently it was pretty awesome!  You drive in to the forest (one of the many on base) and they have a bunch of tents set up.  Then you walk through to each tent that has different scary stuff in it.  One was a hanging hockey mask tent with all of these hockey masks just hanging around….then a few of them jump out and scare you because they have people in them!   A chain saw and people pushing back that turned out to be scary workers is really all I can remember…… because I was at home with the little ones.  Hanna and Carter talked about it for days and had so much fun.  Jared is an awesome Dad to take them and stand in line with them!  It really made their Halloween awesome. 

Cole-man Style

I know what you are thinking “you wish your kid was as fashion aware as ours”.  Cole has many hours in the day before the kids come home from school.  Desperate times call for desperate measures sometimes.  You’re awesome kiddo. 

Rudesheim day trip with Grandma

We tried to take Grandma on a day trip Rhein River Cruise from Bingen, but it didn’t go as planned.  Upon arriving we found out that the day cruises stopped running two days before despite the website saying that they would run through the end of October.  Bummer.  We didn’t want the whole day to be a wash so we took the people ferry over to Rudesheim across the river.  It turned out to be a really fun day and great city.  We’ll have to come back and try the Weinacht Markt (Christmas Market) because it is supposed to be really fun for kids.  We ate lunch and shopped a little, but mostly just enjoyed the crisp Autumn sunny day. 
  

Winter Foreshadowing….

As I was cleaning the kitchen up this morning and the sun was starting to come up, I could see these white frozen spider webs from my kitchen window.  The blue “paper recycle” bin made for the perfect back drop to see the pattern.  So cool.  Definitely a camera moment.  Then I got a bit of winter foreshadowing as I ran out in flip flops and no jacket to take the picture.  German Winter is just around the corner….we are starting to feel it. 

The blue bin is for paper recycle, the brown for yard compost or food other than meat.  The black is for garbage (not pictured).  The yellow “GELB sacks” are for tin cans, and anything plastic.  All glass we save on the patio and have to drive it to the Village glass recycle center.  Ours is just up the street from us on the way to Porrbach our little neighboring Village.  Germany has quite the extensive recycling program.  I’ve come to accept it and actually like to recycle.  The paper bin and the compost bin are just as big as the garbage bin.  They only collect the garbage and the yellow sacks every other week, the paper blue bin once a month and the compost every other week.  If we did not recycle as much as we do, we would not be able to survive with our one black garbage bin.  The food from the house though…..I have never been good at taking out to the compost bin.  I guess in that sense, I’m still an irresponsible American:)  Shhh….its my dirty little secret.  

 

The Odones come to visit!!

The Odones are friends from when we lived together in Vacaville.  Its hard to believe that we only lived by them for one year and then moved to Vegas because we feel like they are lifetime friends!  That’s what being in the Military, being a Doctor, and being a Radiologist does to you it binds you pretty quickly!  The Odones finished Residency in Vacaville and moved to England the same time we moved to Germany.  They came down for a quick weekend trip and came to see us.  It was so fun to get re-aquainted!  Jack and Josh were just babies when we lived by each other, but now they are big first graders!  Emma and Hanna were kindergarteners when we were in Vacaville together and look at these tall middle schoolers now!  It was fun to talk to them and remind them of the Littlest Pet Shop days.  These girls loved those toys and collected them.  We took them out for German Food the first night they got here and then we went for a walk on our favorite trail to see the leaves the next morning.  They weren’t here for long enough.  When can you come back????  (oh and Patrick and Jim can come too next time!)

 

Schwedelbach off in the distance:

 

It was so great to get caught up girl!  Marlina we need you to come over for the ultimate girl’s trip!  We missed you!  We were gonna put our hand to our ears and say “Na, Nanna boo-boo” but you know we are much too mature for such things.  Or at least we didn’t get a picture of it. 

Its easy to be fast friends when you have Star Wars and swords in common as boys.  What else really matters?

 

Carter’s Halloween Party

Carter decided it would be fun to have a Halloween party….. Jared and him researched games, I helped with the invite and food prep we invited the 8th graders from church and the rest was a lot of fun!!
Camille, Ridge, and Sierra

Becky, Alison, and Davis

Hanna, Josh, Ashley and Carter:  It was the same day that Carter got braces.  He was such a good sport and didn’t even complain.  By the end of the night his mouth was hurting a bit, but he had so much fun.  These are a great group of boys and girls in our ward. 

Batman was the perfect costume for Carter.  He is always teasing his brothers right now and making our whole family laugh when he says in a deep whispery voice: “Because, I’m Batman”. 

For games they played a charade game, ate donuts off of a string, tried to pass the witchy hat with no hands around the circle, voted for the costume contest, and then watched “Beetle Juice”.  Definitely a really fun night! 
       
For food:  we served pop, and chips and mummy wraps.  The friends all brought either a sweet treat to share or a salty treat.  It turned out to be a lot of fun!

Ashley was a Venice Gondolier sporting a “driver of bus #2 mustache”.   Ashley lives in Schwedelbach too and Bus driver #2 is kind of famous for his crazy white mustache!  It is something to see.