Halloween Early

We went to a neighborhood Halloween party last night. The parking lot trick-or-treating started just after sundown, meaning it was dark enough to be festive but still light enough to see - and not cold. Then we did the dinner part after. Brilliant!

Zeke seemed to think the whole thing would have been more fun if I hadn't kept stopping him every few feet. He would just get up to running speed when I would have him stop at another car.

Nora slept through the whole party. Thank goodness, because it had been a bad nap day. And trying to keep track of Zeke throughout dinner was more than enough work for Mom and Dad.

Our little sleeping candy corn.

And our train engineer, specifically Thomas's driver.

A Little Autumn

...before it snowed.

Butterfly Release

Grandma and Grandpa found a bunch of end-of-summer monarch caterpillars a few weeks ago and have been releasing butterflies as the caterpillars changed. We were lucky enough to be at their house the day one of the last butterflies emerged, so we took Zeke and Nora and cousins out in the backyard to give this new butterfly his freedom.

Grandma took him out of the jar and showed him around.

Then my sister-in-law had the great idea of doing 'butterfly bows' for the girls.

Love this face....

And Zeke wanted to play too. He stood with his head tilted the whole time, like he was worried the butterfly was going to fall off.

Our butterfly was very accomodating. He flew away twice but let us catch him again until everyone had a turn, then he landed in the top of a tree where we could see but not touch. So much fun!

Blessing Day Party

Nora slept through her party. Which was okay because otherwise she would have been crying and honestly she can't eat the cookies yet anyway.

Because the Loertscher family had another blessing we all had to run to, our party was just a simple mid-morning snack of cookies and banana bread and milk. Aaron gets all the credit for the idea for and creation of the candy corn cookies as well as the cutting and baking of all the fall shapes.

Nora and Daddy

Nora and Mommy

Nora and Zeke