Birthday week and Halloween

Sammy is officially 5, and he had a good birthday week run of it to celebrate. Monday night we carved pumpkins for FHE, and by we I mostly mean me. My kids are wusses about cleaning out the pumpkins, and then Sammy is not quite coordinated enough to do much carving, so I end up doing a good chunk of the work. They did however draw their designs on their pumpkins, so they get creative credit I guess.

Sammy's angry face

 Andi's silly face

His birthday was on a Tuesday, which is a little anti-climactic I think. "Yay it's my birthday, but my party isn't for four more days. . ." and when you are a kid it's all about the party. So we tried to make Tuesday special for him anyway. He got a new bike, because his has been a bit small for a while, plus his handle bars wouldn't stay aligned, which makes things interesting. I made his favorite "green pasta" (pesto) for dinner and he got to blow out candles on a small cake that night after dinner. Here he is sporting the birthday crown he made at school and wore most of the day.

Wednesday night we had our ward trunk-or-treak, which technically wasn't a birthday celebration, but there were games and food and tons of candy, so it was definitely an extra fun night for the kids. Here they are dressed up as a spy/secret agent and a witch (a cute witch mind you.)

Then there was the actual halloween night, which Sammy participated in for the first time ever. He is sick every year on halloween, but this year we dodged the bullet. Barely. So we took the kids out around the neighborhood and I could not believe the hoards of children running around. I had no idea we had that many kids in our area.
Saturday was the birthday party with his friends. He wanted a race car party, so Thad cut out pinewood derby cars that we let the kids color and race in the backyard. It was probably the simplest party we've done, but the kids had fun. And only a few cross words were had over who won each race.

Then Sunday we had family dinner at our house and did more birthday celebrating. He really did get a whole week of fun this year.
Aside from partying, Peter had his 15 month check up this week as well. As usual he is above the 97% for height, but his little dot was so far above the 97% line this time that I had to post a picture. It's ridiculous!

Do you see that dot!?!?!  But the poor little bean pole is only in the 20% for weight. His muddy playtime has become a daily occurance lately. Last week, it got pretty bad.

Excuse the sun right behind his head, but I love his mouth wide open in this picture, like he's roaring or something. The sun also blocks the fact that there is mud all in his hair.

He has a love/hate relationship with his swing these days as well. He likes to swing, but has realized we use it as a bit of a baby jail when we are puttering around the yard. This day he was enjoying it though.

 

And then there is this, and I'm not sure why he dumped all the toys out of it and sat there to watch tv. He wasn't sure it was a great idea either.