Keeping Up With the Isaacsons

Leaf Pictures

I've rambled enough so you just get pictures on this one. :-)

I love this sibling picture of the little sister finally getting even with the big sister.

And I love this picture of them throwing leaves at me and the camera.

Lily LOVED the leaves this year! She wouldn't really go near them the last two years. It was so fun to watch her. She would run and jump and roll in them! And this was the first year that Ella wasn't quite as interested in the leaf thing. So you get more Lily photos.

Lily the leaf composer

Trick or Treat

We ended our pre-Halloween activities with a party at My Gym. It was fun to see the teachers dressed up. The girls had fun playing around and it gave us a chance to give the costumes a test run.

Halloween night we headed over to the Andersons down the block, and our gang headed out. We canvased quite a bit of the neighborhood ending at our house. The girls got quite a haul. Before we ended up at the house, we had 2 kids come by. TWO. Then we had 7 (we picked up a couple other neighbor kids along the way). And a couple more neighbor friends stopped by after that. I think our grand total was about 15. I think next year maybe we won't hand out candy and then both Andrew and I can go trick or treating with the kiddos.

I love this picture of little Claire. She looks so NOT thrilled to be in the frog costume. But she held on to that trick or treat basket for dear life. She wasn't going to lose any of her candy.

How cute are they?--Ella, Isabelle, Hope holding Claire, Lily

We headed over to my dad's house after that to help my step-brother Sam celebrate his golden birthday. The girls did one more round of trick or treating with Daddy and B-pa. Then we trouped into the car and headed down to Cedar Rapids for a visit with my mom and Dave.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Once upon a time, Andrew set out to find the biggest pumpkin on the lot. He and the girls searched high and low for the largest gourd they could find.

But it had to be the perfect shape, perfect color, and blemish free.

After surveying the lot, they settled on one.

It took two to carry it to the scale. The great pumpkin weighed a whopping 25 pounds.

Andrew paid the man and strapped the plump pumpkin in. Then we enjoyed the harvest set up.

We took our pumpkin home.
Andrew scooped the yuck out and played around a bit.

(This just makes me think of the episode of Friends
where Joey get the turkey stuck on his head.)

(Like father, like daughter?)
Then he set out to make a SP000KY face.

Here is the finished product.

And all our pumpkin friends on the front steps.

Pumpkin Activities

We have a little family owned farm market about two miles from us (Marshall's Farm Market). It's open year round and every year they line up pumpkins and mums. They have yummy baked goods, gourds, hay bales and more. They bring in a huge pumpkin-shaped bounce house. It seems each year they add something to the festivities. This year they added a spook house for the kids to crawl through.

I love this photo even though I have no idea who the little kid is in it. But I happened to catch him in mid-air as he was jumping off the hay bale. Anyhoo, we had fun picking out pumpkins and checking out everything else there.

We had beautiful weather and each of the girls picked out a few pumpkins. We brought them home and made glitter pumpkins by spreading Elmer's glue on the pumpkins and shaking glitter over them.

Two artistic-y pumpkin shots.

I love this shot of Lily. She is so happy (she was actually doing a little pumpkin happy dance) and her smile is so natural. Usually, she hates me taking a photo of her; she turns the other way and whines.

The same weekend we attended a harvest festival at the girls' preschool. They each decorated a harvest centerpiece on burlap. These are actually on our dining room table now and will be decorations for Thanksgiving. You know they are suckers for a good art project. ;-) They also played pumpkin games and had their faces painted. It was a fun little family outing.