Time for Some Catching Up!

Well, I'm back with my usual excuse for why I haven't posted anything in a while.  Life is just busy!  The holiday season especially.  So...hopefully...expect a few posts in the next several days.  First up,  Halloween.

We had several activities available for Halloween this year.  The San Jose ward was having a Trunk or Treat and Google was having a family Googleween party, plus there was the day itself.  We decided to skip the ward party and go to the Googleween.  What a crowd!

The kids dressed up and we got to the campus maybe and hour after it started.  There were so many people!  Anna got right in the first game and played that, but the other activities had lines that stretched for miles!  I really didn't want to stand in line for 20-30 minutes so we could shoot darts at inflatable aliens.  Anna did a few activities without lines and then we left about an hour later.  There were just too many people.

Ready to Trick or Treat!

First door

On our way!

The haul

 Anna had fun Halloween night.  Steve took the kids door to door in the neighborhood while I stayed home for the trick or treaters.  I didn't get a single knock during the 45 minutes they were gone.  Steve and I then switched.  He stayed home and I took Anna.  We went down our block, but only 5 houses were available.  Kind of a dud, but Anna had fun.  Steve didn't have any trick or treaters either.  By the end of the night I think we had a total of 2 dozen kids come to the door.

The Pumpkin Patch

The Saturday before Halloween, we headed to the pumpkin patch.  Just finding a good pumpkin patch was a feat in and of itself.  There's not a lot of farmland near San Jose.  I refuse to buy our pumpkins out of a grocery store box and most of the 'patches' were parking lots with hay bales, inflatables and pumpkins scattered about.

Steve did some research online and discovered Spina Farms on the southernmost edge of San Jose.  It's actually closer to Morgan Hill.  It's a really cute place with sunflowers growing all along the edges.  They had picnic benches all
over and cute decorations that were just screaming for parents to take pictures of kids with.
It was the most perfect day for it- sunny but not too hot.  We got there just in time for an early lunch at one of the picnic benches.  Then we were off to the activities.  There was a hay ride, a train ride, pony rides, and a petting zoo.  We let Anna pick 2.  She decided on the train ride and the pony ride.


First up was the train ride.  Steve and Matthew
went with her and they all rode in the caboose.  Next, Steve got in line for the pony ride while the kids and I roamed around, taking pictures, playing with kids, and looking at pumpkins.  Steve and I ended up waiting about 30 minutes before it was Anna's turn with the pony, but she loved it!
















It was finally time to find a pumpkin.  Anna had originally said she wanted a little one, but we thought we'd look around the patch first.  She fixated on a HUGE pumpkin with warts all over it.  We showed her others that were smaller or weren't so lumpy, but she decided that this was the one she wanted.  We also ended up getting the small pumpkin for Steve and a little bitty one for Matthew.

Halloween Costumes

We tried on our Halloween costumes and the kids were so cute, I had to do a mini-photo shoot!  Plus, I really love this 1960s filter on Picassa.  Hope you like the pics.

Halloween 2012

 Our first part of our Halloween celebration had to be a visit to the pumpkin patch.  Steve's brother, Ken, and his family: Kate, Jared, and Billy, came down for the afternoon.  It was a little late in the season, so most of the pumpkins in the field were very small.  We chose 2 small pumpkins.  But two small pumpkins seemed a little disappointing.  So...we got one of the BIG pumpkins at the front.  It weighed in at a little over 50 lbs.  We took a hayride and posed in the bales of hay.  A very nice afternoon.

Next up, came decorating pumpkins and the Trunk or Treat.  I carved one of the little pumpkins and the huge pumpkin.  Anna colored and painted a white pumpkin.  That was just perfect for her.

The Trunk or Treat was the Saturday before Halloween.  We had soup and bread for dinner.  It was really cute; her friend Jonah grabbed Anna's tail and she pulled him around the gym.  They had so much fun.  We then went out for the candy.  Steve took Anna around.  There were several other kids dressed up as zoo animals.  A tiger and a giraffe, we were able to get pictures with.  Zufeldts dressed up as zookeepers with their kids as a monkey and something else.  We wanted to get a picture with them, but couldn't.  Anna was in love with getting free candy.

Finally, came the big day.  I, of course, forgot to paint her nose.  Oh well.  She was soooo excited to go trick or treating.  I took her to our old neighborhood.  She literally ran from one house to the next, barely stopping to knock on the door and get her treat.  Once, she tripped and fell and her candy went flying.  She jumped up, grabbed her candy and kept on running.  So cute.  Steve took her to the houses in our new neighborhood.  Needless to say, she was a little tired when she got home.  Not too tired, though to dump out all the candy and have a taste.

Trick or Treat

 So, Halloween has come and gone.  This year, Anna really started to notice that things are a little different.  She has become obsessed with apples and pumpkins.  We have a couple of simple books about each and I think that I have read them about 40 times now.  When we go outside, she points to the pumpkin and says, 'Pucky! Pucky!'.  I had hoped that we would get to carve some jack-o-lanterns, but circumstances made that impossible today.

We had a ward Trunk or Treat on Saturday.  We had lots of soup and then went around to all the cars in the parking lot.  Anna enjoyed wearing her costume.  She loved the hat and was ecstatic to be her beloved 'Pucky!'.  She did such a good job.  She politely waited at each car and said thank you to each person.  She also put her candy right in her bag.  She didn't even try to eat it right away.

Tonight was Halloween night.  I took Anna on one side of the street and Steve took her on the other side.  She was really amazed by everyone walking around in costumes.  We stopped and took a picture with a neighbor friend.  When she got home, she got to eat one of her KitKats.  Yummy!  It was a fun day.

Fun Couple of Days

 Yesterday, Steve and I headed to the Capitol Theater to see our fourth opera together.  It has been a tradition for us to go see an opera every October since we met and started dating.  The first was Madame Butterfly (sad), the second was Carmen (sad), and the third was La Boheme (sad).  This one was Fidelio by Beethoven.  It's his only opera. It was sad in the beginning but actually had a happy ending!  Steve says that is must be a comedy then.  I don't agree.

Today, Steve's brother, Ken, and his family came over for a while.  We all went to the pumpkin patch.  I was so excited!  Going to a pumpkin patch to get pumpkins is just right.  I hate picking them out of a cardboard box at the grocery store...boring! I've done it, though, because the nearest patch to me was 30 miles away near Salt Lake. Luckily, I saw a flier for a new one just a 5 minute drive from our house.  It's 3 acres of someone's backyard in Erda.  She said that she decided to do a patch for her grandchildren, since there wasn't one close by.  YAY!!!!!

The weather was wonderful (72) and the pumpkins were great.  Kate kept looking at a pumpkin and saying, "This one's perfect!".  Then she'd walk to another and say, "This one's perfect, too!"  It went on and on.  They have a couple of varieties, but all really good looking.  Anna loved being pulled in the wagon with her cousin, Billy, but not walking around.  She kept tripping.  We got a couple of good-looking pumpkins and took our picture by the hay bales. (see pictures below)