I love me a

Trunk-or-Treat,

I do.

Ian was the aforementioned Pteranadon,

Blake was a bag of cotton candy.

Side note:

If you tell me that I never have to sew thin vinyl again,

I'll be an extremely happy woman. =)

Halloween,

Preschool-style

is awesome.

We had a halloween party this morning with another

pre-school co-op...(also friends from our ward).

The kids had SO MUCH FUN.

First, we had a little show-off-the-costume moment.

We had a giraffe (Alice), penguin (Avery), frog (Ella), Bee (Ada),

Pteranadon (Ian), Tinkerbell (Linzey), and two black cats (Makenna and Hayli).

Ian's costume was hand-made by Joe. He did a FANTASTIC job!

And it being preschool and everything, we did some worksheets.

Followed by cookie decorating...

Followed by Sylvia's adorable Halloween cupcakes...

annnnnnnnnd, the aftermath...

A few things as of late:

First,

we declared Monday to be

Sugar Pumpkin Painting Home-Evening.

And subsequently, NEXT Monday will be declared to be

Sugar Pumpkin Steaming And Freezing Home-Evening

Second:

Behold,

Mr. Roly-Poly

Third:

Here's Ian hiking Wachusett.

Password: hiking

Of note: he's humming "Following the Leader"

from Peter Pan

Also of note: At the end, he's getting a promised

Nilla Wafer Bribe. It took us about six Nilla Wafers

to get him up the mountain.

Not bad, eh?

ALERT!

The following post contains words and/or photos pertaining to birth.

Consider yourself warned.

Now to the funny story:

Background--

Joe and I buy bushels upon bushels of apple "seconds" each fall.

This year, we made:

apple sauce

apple chips

apple fruit leather

and

apple pie filling.

It's the pie filling that's most pertinent to this story, you see.

We had processed enough pie filling for 12 pies

which we stored in our basement freezer,

(joe suggested we start a pie-of-the-month club)

but had enough leftover to make some sort of fresh baked good.

Last night, we decided to make an apple crisp

(which I burned)

but had enough topping left for another.

THIS IS WHERE THE STORY GETS GOOD.

We packaged up the crumble topping

and were wondering out loud what to do with it.

And this is a very important piece of information:

I thought we were talking about where to store the topping,

as we have two freezers these days.

JOE thought we were talking about how to EAT the topping.

Commit those facts to memory.

The following conversation ensued...

Joe: Well, we can put it on the pie filling.

Jen: OR we can just put it on top of the placenta.

You can see why Joe might have been a little bit confused.

And, for the record, after we sorted out the semantics,

we chose to put it on top of the placenta.

It made the most sense to keep the crumble upstairs, you see.

Here's proof

[both of the crumble, and that I have a messy freezer door]:

The crumble topping is on the bottom next to the pine nuts.

FURTHER CLARIFICATION:

This is not gross. I promise.

Repeat that to yourselves over, and over and over.

[I've gone ahead and googled "Uses of the placenta" for you.]

You're welcome. =)

The placenta is nothing short of amazing.

And since we had the chance to choose what happened to Blake's placenta,

we chose to keep it while we decided how to use it.

(We are going to plant it in the spring).

But for now, it's bunking up with the apple crisp topping in my freezer.

The end.

For starters,

the winter chill is on our horizon.

And Blake's not terribly interested in keeping a blanket on.

Further, sleep sacks cost approximately four-thousand dollars each.

So I made one.

Blake seems to like it.

And most importantly,

he won't outgrow it for a while.

WIN-WIN.

Today was a gorgeous fall day,

so we headed out for some

wholesome recreational activities.

We hiked Wachusett!

SO. FUN.

And to make it that much better:

Ian hiked the whole thing all by himself.

Well...he wasn't ALONE.

He just didn't need to be carried.

We are so proud of him.

We've hit the peak.

And if it looks this good from our cul-de-sac,

you can imagine how amazing it looks everywhere else.

Because I know you were all thinking:

"Oooooh, foliage and power lines.

Pretty."

(Also, it's recycling day....but I think our bins just add to the ambiance.)

It's fall...

...which means that

it's time to update the

Family Photo.

(It also means that Joe and I begin our annual Christmas Card Debate.)

But that's another post for another day.

And, no, you don't get to see the photo today.

You just get to see the outtakes.

Because we like to stir the pot like that.

(This last one is what happens when the tripod gets blown over by a gust of wind...all while operating on the automatic timer...)