Boo! again

I failed at squeezing in all the fall-related posts!  Oh well.....


From what I've seen, lambs were a popular costume this year. 

Betcha didn't see one (the costume OR the child wearing it) as cute as this though:







A lamb, with a matching treat sack no less!  Those things cost me a pretty penny but I loved them.

Mariah denied my costume idea for her (an owl) and chose instead to be an angel.   She squeezed into the flower girl dress that Arissa wore at age 5, I found a halo here and some wings there, ordered her personalized treat sack from and she was all set:













Arissa chose to be a bee when she saw a set of wings & antennae at the dollar store.  I ended up picking up two more sets of them at different places, cause they were cute, and she finally ended up wearing these.  There was supposed to be a black & yellow tutu to go with it but I failed and didn't get it made.









Love this shot:







Halloween won't be the same anymore unless their treat sacks match their costumes!












Setting out to get their treats:










Arissa's shoe gave her problems so Jesse had to carry her on the way back.







We stopped by Nana's after we'd collected as much candy as we could:







And then finally by Nina's to end the night:







It was a fun night, and the girls got enough candy to last them a week (which was the amount of time I gave them to eat it before I threw it all out).

It was the first Halloween in several years that no one was violently ill (click the link if you don't remember).  We came pretty close though, all of us had a stomach flu the entire weekend but when it was time to dress up, out health was restored thankgoodness.

A perfectly lovely day at the pumpkin patch, for a total cost of $3.

Gotta squeeze all these fall/pumpkin-y/halloween-y posts in before December comes and they don't fit!




We took a trip to the pumpkin patch in Bonita.  It's not the biggest, most elaborate patch in San Diego, but it's fun & it's quaint & it's close........& it would have been free except they extorted $3 out of us to let the girls run wild through the corn maze, which Mariah got lost in and sat down and cried for 15 minutes.  :(



The pictures speak for themselves!
















Tractor ride!


























Interestingly, we did not purchase any pumpkins at the pumpkin patch.  I got those on sale @ Sprouts, for $2 each, which I was so happy and proud of myself for.  The one went rotten and the FedEx man kicked one in, and Mariah got sick the day we carved and never got around to carving hers.  And so I'm glad I spent $2 each at Sprouts instead of $6 each at the pumpkin patch.

boo!

Why's there a lil lamb in my passenger seat?








Cause me & my lamb were on our way to:













Nana & Uncle Ronnie came to watch too.








Can you tell Mallory had a blast?  She was pretty excited.







Here they come!







Yeah, she sees me....







My little lamb got put to work at the end.







Arissa & Mariah (and the whole group) were also on the morning news several times, which is now preserved for time and all eternity on our dvr...and making it dangerously close to not recording Oprah's lifeclass because the memory is full.  But it's ok.

oktoberfest

I'd been looking forward to Oktoberfest since......the first day that it got really hot in the summer.  Oktoberfest is the un-official beginning of Fall to me.






It wouldn't really be Oktoberfest without our traditional pizza dinner beforehand:









I knew we weren't going to get past the rides (and closer to the CRAFTS) without a fight so we let the girls go on a few.























Arissa was prepared to ride her favorite ride solo, except as soon as she sat down, these two little boys hopped right up next to her.  It was cute.

Then came the Frog Hopper.  Mariah's favorite ride.  All 3 girls got on.













So much fun!


Then the ride started.











And the way each girl felt about the ride can be clearly seen here on their faces:








Mallory is not laughing.  She is screaming/crying hysterically.










But she made it through.  And I bet she'll be on that ride again cause she'll forget how terrified she was.


All 3 girls brought their wallets....hooray!  That meant that all WE had to spring for was the pizza & the ride tix.  The rest was all on the girls themselves, and Jesse was able to save a little somethin for the beer garden!


Here, Mallory's face is saying "can you hurry up and take the picture so I can go spend every last penny in my wallet on stuff I won't play with after 2 hours?"










These girls are lucky I can photo-shop those fingers outta my pics!!







One of the things they wasted spent their hard-earned money on was....sweets.


Highly over-priced sweets.












But watching them do their own transactions is always cute, and always entertaining for the clerk too:










"Please take our hard-earned money that our Mommy & Daddy gave us to teach us how to save for things we really want, and in return please give us some sugar with added sugar and a sprinkle of sugar on top":







Mmmm sugar.  Mariah's came in the form of a Root Beer Float:






Arissa wanted hers in the form of shaved ice:











Then they all ran around in a little sugar-frenzy with their empty wallets until it was time to leave.


I so LOVE Oktoberfest. 

I do not love the smell of bratwurst cooking.

GROSS.