Halloween

I'm always curious what my kids will want to dress up as for Halloween, so I start asking them a couple months in advance.  This year, Amelia decided right off the bat that she wanted to be Kiersten the American Girl, who lived on the prairie around the same time as Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Amelia picked out the fabric for her costume herself; she decided that she didn't want her dress to be exactly like Kiersten's (because Kiersten's is dark red and has no ruffles) so she went with purple instead (I'm sure you are all surprised to hear that.)

Megan kept changing her mind about what she wanted to dress up as; various ideas included a cat, Jessie from Toy Story, and ice Elsa.  About two weeks before Halloween, she settled on Princess Aurora, which was perfect because we had that costume in our dress up box already.

I took photos of the girls the weekend before Halloween when they were dressed up for our church's trunk-or-treat, because the weather was lovely, and I figured it would probably be cold and rainy on Halloween (and I was right!)

I chose Nathaniel's costume for him - he loves minions even though he doesn't really know what they are.  And while he would probably have been thrilled to be a backhoe or a train, those seemed like complicated costumes to create, and a minion costume was EASY.  Especially since Becky dyed the shirt for us.  Anyway, he was very excited to be a minion!

Halloween didn't turn out how we planned, but we still had a fun evening.  The Weidners were supposed to come visit us over the Halloween weekend, but Amelia had been struggling all week with an on-again off-again fever, and it came back Friday evening, so they ended up not coming.  We were all so sad.  :(  Randomly, though, my friend Lori from Kraft called up to see if they could come trick-or-treating with us, because they were up in Beaver Dam at a hotel while her husband went goose hunting.  So we had fun company for trick-or-treating anyway!  Amelia was feeling fine most of Saturday, but by the time we got back home in the evening, her fever was back.  It was cold and rainy most of the day, but the rain stopped around 5:15, and by the time we headed out around 5:30, it was actually reasonably nice outside.  So here are our kids with Michaela and Kasey:

You might notice that Megan is wearing her Halloween costume from last year.  She decided it was too cold to wear her thin Princess Aurora costume, and she was really happy to dress as Coronation Elsa again.  And I was happy that the costume got used again after all the time I spent making it!

We had also met up with a few friends on Thursday to go trick-or-treating around downtown Sun Prairie.  Here's our group of friends, along with the only photo I have of my three kids together in their costumes:

What have we been up to all fall?

It's been a long time since I've posted; I got tired of sorting through photos and journaling about our lives.  But the kids and I really enjoy looking back at posts I've written in years past, so I decided that I should try to keep it up.  So here goes.

Amelia got a tie-dye kit for her birthday, and I was a little nervous about how it would go, so I delayed and delayed and delayed actually using it.  Finally I decided that if we were still going to try it out this fall, we needed to do it before freezing weather arrived, so we picked a warmish fall day and gave it a try.  I was surprised at how easy and fun and minimally-messy it was!  Megan needed help getting the rubber bands or zip-ties tight around her shirts, but Amelia could do it almost entirely by herself.  We did the actual tie-dyeing outside on the deck, which was a good idea because some definitely got squirted on the picnic table and the floor, and it was much easier to clean up outside.  We also put the clothes we were dyeing on cooling racks so that they wouldn't soak up other colored puddles.  The girls did shirts, leggings and socks.  Coincidentally, the next Thursday was a spirit day at school - Tie Dye Day!  The girls decided to wear all their tie-dyed clothes at the same time.  I'm sure they were the most colorful kids at school:

The girls had to look at every single pumpkin at our nearby farm before they would choose one to take home (they really remind me of me and Becky when we were little!).  Thankfully I had procrastinated long enough that there weren't too many pumpkins left.

The farm has a little petting area with some goats and chickens and ponies.  The kids tried to feed the animals, but the goats weren't interested in the grass, the chickens tried to peck their fingers, and they were afraid of the ponies.  They did, however, LOVE the barn cat, who was very tolerant of children.

When we went to the pumpkin patch, Nathaniel wanted to choose small white pumpkins (they're actually a kind of gourd, I guess) instead of a big orange pumpkin.  When we got home, he wanted to sleep with them.  That was three weeks ago, and they are still in his bed!  He calls them "baby" and refuses to lay down unless he knows they are in his bed with him.  Sometimes he even says "bank" and tucks them in with his blanket.  He is wearing his "reer reer" jammies (or firetruck jammies, for those who don't speak toddler.)

I signed both girls up for Lego Club at the library last month, since Megan is finally old enough to go.  They sat next to each other and cooperatively built a castle.  I asked Amelia if she would have wanted to sit by someone else, and she said "No, I always want to sit by Megan because she's my sister!"  The library has some really interesting building pieces.

The little maple tree in our front yard dropped half of its leaves all at one time, and they didn't blow away immediately. So for the first time ever, we had enough leaves to rake up a little pile.  The kids were ecstatic!  The girls took turns burying each other, and they did such a good job that you can barely see them in the following photos.  Even Nathaniel got in on the fun by throwing leaves in the air and running through the pile.

We decorated our trunk for our church's Trunk or Treat.  I showed the girls a few examples of decorated trunks on Pinterest, and they quickly decided that they wanted to do an under the sea themed trunk because they wanted to play the fishing game.  So I asked them if they would make some sea creatures to live under the sea, while I taped three sheets of foamboard together to make our fishing area.  Their friend Aiden was over, so she helped with the shark.  This was a great project for them - it kept them busy for ages and they were so proud of their decorations.  Everyone at the trunk or treat loved the fishing game, too, and thought it was clever that their "fish" were actually little bags of goldfish crackers.

Driving East

The first day of our drive home was very grey and rainy.  We had found a few interesting things to do along the drive to Minneapolis, primarily around Fargo, ND, but they were all outside and it was raining so much that we skipped them all.  We did drive through the town of Valley City, North Dakota, which is known for its many bridges.  This train bridge was considered so important for transporting goods during World War II that it was actually guarded by soldiers against terrorism.

We spent the night at a hotel in Minneapolis right near the Mall of America.  The hotel had a swimming pool, so we let the girls swim for a while in the morning.  Interestingly, it was a salt water pool.  Amelia let Ben throw her up high so she could splash down in the pool, which is something she had never wanted to try before.

Because we were so close, I said we should go eat lunch at the Mall of America, because it would have a lot of choices for fast food.  When we walked in, we saw the American Girl store right in front of us, so Mom and I took the girls to look around while the boys went to the Lego store.  Mom bought the girls each an outfit, for Amelia's doll Caroline and for Megan's doll that she is going to get for Christmas but doesn't know about yet.  After MUCH deliberation, Amelia chose Caroline's Christmas outfit which is purple and comes with a braided hair headband, purple shoes and long white gloves because she knew Caroline was being retired and she would never have another chance to get one of Caroline's own outfits.  Megan chose Rebecca's movie star dress, which is pink with flowers and comes with a lovely pink hat.  Thanks for letting the girls choose outfits, Mom, what a special treat that was for them!  Then we met the boys in the Lego store, where Dad had to show us his favorite 5000 piece kits.  The girls loved all the huge creations made out of Legos.

Finally, we stopped at Crystal Cave in Wisconsin.  It was a fun little tour; the cave doesn't have any spectacular formations, but it did have lots of tiny stalactites:

And then, two hours later, we got home.  I made a quick dinner of chicken nuggets for the kids and orange chicken for the adults, then we put the kids to bed, got the car unpacked, and went to bed ourselves.  We had a fantastic trip, and it was so nice to be able to share it with Mom and Dad!  Thanks for coming with us!  We all loved having you along!

Devil's Tower and Theodore Roosevelt National Parks

We left the Black Hills on Friday morning and drove to Devil's Tower, because Ben had never been there and the kids had never been to Wyoming.  Our first stop inside the park was the prairie dog town, where we got to see the prairie dogs very close up.

 Then we went to the visitor's center to pick up the Junior Ranger pamphlets; Nathaniel got a head start on the trail while the girls started filling out their books.

Megan liked learning about the Native American legend that said a huge bear had trapped a group of hunters on top of the tower, and the bear scratched at the rock trying to climb up the tower, which made the scratches on the side.  She still likes to ask how tall that bear must have been.

The kids really wanted to climb on all the rocks, but there were a lot of signs saying that climbing on rocks above the trails was illegal and that violators would be prosecuted, so we only let them climb on a few rocks right on the trail.  Exploring on those rocks was one of my favorite memories from our trips out west, and it is so disappointing that a few careless people ruined it for everyone.  Anyway, all the kids loved climbing on the rocks and jumping off of them.

We didn't have time to walk around the entire tower because we planned to drive through Montana, stopping at a state park so that the kids and Ben could count that as a new state, before driving on to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota and exploring there.  So we finished up the Junior Ranger pamphlet, turned it in to get the girls' badges, and headed out.

As it turned out, there was road construction, and Ben's phone directed him the wrong way, so we didn't get to go through Montana.  But it worked out for the best, because we wouldn't have had really any time at Teddy Roosevelt if we'd taken that detour.  Theodore Roosevelt National Park was great, and a perfect place to explore in North Dakota.  (Hey, did you notice?  Ben and the kids have now been in North Dakota!)  As we started off on the loop road, the first thing we came across was a prairie dog town.  We were having a good time watching the prairie dogs when Megan spotted a coyote!  The coyote was looking for some tasty prairie dogs to eat; he would stick his snout down into a prairie dog burrow, come up empty, then move along to the next one.  The prairie dogs had sentries stationed at the mounds nearby keeping an eye on the coyote, but I was surprised by how close they would let him get before they would duck down into their burrows.  After watching this coyote for a while, Megan noticed that there was a second one following along behind him.  The girls were devastated thinking about a coyote wanting to eat a cute prairie dog, but we didn't see him catch any.

As the girls were laying down on the ground listening to the sounds of prairie dogs, we noticed that a herd of bison nearby was on the move.  We got the kids back in the car, drove down a short ways, and had to stop:

Some of the bison were crossing the road, but the biggest guy decided to stand still in the middle of the road, and then the herd decided to walk down the road in the direction that we were going.

We followed along for a while, enjoying the rare opportunity to be so close to these huge creatures while remaining in the safety of our car.  Although, I did stick my head pretty far out of the window to get some photos.

We did a short trail to an overlook of the Little Missouri River; it was hazy but we did manage to spot another herd of bison in the distance.

I took a photo of these tiny liatrus for Mom:

On the way back to our car, the girls were thrilled to spot a Hawaii license plate!  We ended up seeing license plates from 48 states, all except West Virginia and Rhode Island.

Dad spotted part of the herd of wild horses a little further on our drive:

Theodore Roosevelt National Park was a great place to stop, with the best wildlife that we saw the whole trip.  It was definitely worth the long and very boring drive to North Dakota.  We could have spent an entire day there, I think.