Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Christmastides at the Halverson house.

This looks like we are penning them in, but we took it off the tree, and they both decided it might be fun to go inside.

Mommy made us Christmas pjs.

Pengie pjs!

My new hippo hooded towel, so exciting!

Partners in Crime

These two are getting big enough to play together, and when they don't want the same toy, that means  a lot of time is spent getting into things.

Here they are chasing a cricket. If I was him I'd be terrified (mommy captured him and put him outside).






Not totally sure what they were doing here, but it seemed to be lots of fun. 

Possibly plotting more mischief?




Raiding the Christmas tree. Little stinkers. 

Climber

She's 11 months old folks, and if there's any doubt that this girl will turn her mommy's hair gray, this is what we found her doing after our backs were turned for maybe a minute.

Time for Trick or Treat

It's finally here, the day my son has been asking about multiple times a day for about a month now. So here's an idea of how we Halversons reveled in the festivities.


Serious contemplation of pumpkins prior to carving them up.



Pumpkin seeds are surprisingly exciting.

Here's the one he "caught". There may or may not have been a burning incident, so the pumpkins seeds are a little over-toasty this time around. Bryce still insisted on eating a whole bunch this morning, claiming they taste like coffee (which he's never had)




Ahhh, pumpkin's eating my hand!  3 year old boys...enough said.

Getting the very last ones out. 

Daddy decided to carve a fish for his pumpkin, so since daddy is Bryce's main hero, mommy got to make a fish for his pumpkin too. Mommy was also changing a diaper and making a delicious dinner of butternut squash soup at the same time, which explains why the parrot-lion-fish horror mommy carved looks a little odd. But a hammer & few toothpicks later, it became a poisonous puffer fish (another Bryceman fave) and he was back on board with the pumpkin carving awesomeness.

And here's mommy's pumpkin which perennially gets the short end of the stick after the other ones are done, while cleaning up, finding candles and getting into costumes.

(It's an octopus, following our sea creature theme, in case you couldn't guess. Not mommy's best work on the carving this year folks. If only mommy had that many arms....)

Below we have the pre-costume shot to memorialize the fact that we are all fed and breathing at this point of the evening just in case everything takes a decided turn for the worse. You never know with a 3 yr old and a 10 month old. In it you can see daddy's pumpkin which is a scary angler fish (like the deep ocean trench kind) He is missing a piece, so stayed tuned for a picture of the full effect.

Directly after we have a pretty good costume shot, all things considered (by all things, I mean that since the last shot Jocelyn jumped out of my arms and fell flat on her face while I was putting on her pants, so she has a bit of a goose egg).




We were able to recover and she did surprisingly well. (See facebook for action trick or treating shots). Both costumes were a hit with the neighbors, and J managed to keep her antenna on until the very end. Bryce did a good job knocking on doors this year, he even had a small lady pirate friend following us around for a while. (We have informed him that there will be no interest in lady pirates for at least another 25 years)

Loot!

Happening Now at the Halverson's

Busy creeping around with my walker.










Whoa!

Super intense working on cameras and laser guns. 

Daddy needs a haircut.

Jocelyn's first ride in the chariot, her helmet's a little big yet.






Where'd she go?

A Fairly Significant Case of the Frizz

Must be fall (although rolling around in the clean laundry might have something to do with it too).

Still pretty cute.

Feelin' like Fall

It's been a busy September so we didn't make it out to pick apples this time, but we still wanted to do something fun and fallish with the kiddos. Here's a few shots from the nice day we had at Murray Farms.



It was a little hard to keep Jocelyn from eating the hay.

 We were trying for just one nice picture of both of them. But below you'll see that with a 3 year old boy involved that can be a bit of a challenge. When we look at family photos 10 years from now, we will call this period Bryce's wacky smile phase.

They have a corn maze and big tall mountains of straw to climb.

Feeling braver now that daddy is climbing too (with Jocelyn on his back, so mommy is trying not to watch)









Bryce's favorite: duck races!

The big bouncer. Herein we see the drastic difference between our children. Bryce bounced a little bit and decided that was enough of that......








while his sister, ever a fan of being chucked, wanted to bounce forever.

Finally some apple picking. 

That little girl was worn out! I know I'm partial, but she may be the cutest little sleeping girl ever. 

It's Fair Time Again

Chickie-doos: apparently still interesting even though we have some at home.








Bunny-zilla! Wow!

Daddy giving life and limb to protect the ice cream cone of food in the petting zoo. These deer were vicious! (see them eating his shirt?)








Not sure about this...

Finally got the feeding worked out. Although daddy had to put the white goat in an arm bar to make it work.

Llama llama petting zoo mama. 







Jocelyn was pretty excited to find an animal her speed, or size at least.

 Pumpkin-zilla! Our son is a little obsessed with pumpkins lately since he has a Berenstain bear book where they have a pumpkin contest.





Riding the Ferris wheel when Bryce and daddy went back to the fair later to hang out with cousin Levi. He told me he was very scared to go up high, but he sure doesn't look it.