It's the most wonderful time of the year!

The fall is totally my favorite time of the year!

It's chalked full of fun traditions that we look forward to each year...

A visit to None Such Farm to see the pumpkin people is one of our favorite things to do...

The last few years, we've been taking Brady and Emalee with us. Emalee was sick this year so she wasn't able to come with, but we still had fun...

Curious George and the man with the yellow hat...

Iron Chefs..

Farmer with lamb...(be still my heart!)

Michael Jackson...

Go cart kids...

the Princess from Mario...

I love the way our yard looks with leaves scattered around...

Scenes like these...

these...

and these stop me in my tracks...

My mom, sister Katie and my neice, Josie came for their annual visit to our house to join in on the Halloween festivities...

On Friday morning, we went to the elementary school to see the Halloween parade...There were so many creative costumes (chinese take out costume, fortune teller, flower pot, bag of garbage...etc.)

I couldn't stand Jake's costume...that mask is heinous! It made me want to smack him. I wish they had a no mask rule at school...I guess those days of cute fleecy, zipup elephant costumes are over...(sigh)

After the parade, we took Josie and Ellie over to None Such Farm to see the pumpkin people...The girls had fun running around and just being silly.

I hadn't noticed this pumpkin scene when I took the older kids a few weeks ago...It is John and Kate plus 8...how funny is that?!

For Ellie's Halloween party at school, I attempted to make cat cupcakes. They didn't end up quite like the picture in the magazine...I'm terribly inept in the baking department...(and this was even from a BOX!)

Ellie's costume this year was a Hershey kiss, although from certain angles, she looks like she came straight from the vatican)...

After dinner, we all went over Winding Brook Farm. My mom took Josie, Ellie and Reilly on a mini hay maze while Katie, Jake, Brady and I went on an extreme WALK OF HORROR...

It was definitely scary, and I had to keep reminding myself that no one was allowed to touch us. The scariest part was being chased by a man with a chain saw...!

On Halloween morning, we began carving our pumpkins...(8 total)...

The kids each drew a pumpkin face onto a piece of paper and my mom, Katie and I attempted to recreate it on a pumpkin...

After the soccer games for Jake and Reilly, it became clear that Reilly wasn't feeling very well...I took her temperature in the afternoon and it was 104!

I dreaded telling her that she would not be able to go trick or treating that night. She was hysterical! I felt so bad for her but it all worked out in the end. I promised her that we would go trick or treating for her and she got to watch a movie in bed. She seemed to cheer up after the promise of her own bag of candy.

We usually go trick or treating with our neighbors, the Days. Jake still got to go with Brady, but with Reilly being sick, I just went with my neighbor Lynda, her daughter Bella (whose around Ellie's age), my sister, Katie and Josie.

It started to rain shortly after we started out, but it was super warm, so it wasn't so bad. Ellie started complaining about being thirsty about 20 minutes into the whole thing, so we only lasted about an hour total.

Here we are right before going trick or treating...(I'm wearing Brian's party pooper costume just to be a good sport)

I wish I would have taken a picture of the candy that we got...(it was the lamest candy year EVER!) Not one single tart piece of candy in the lot! I don't know why I'm so obsessed with trick or treat candy...I'm a grown woman and can very easily go out to the store and buy my favorite candy (Twix bars, sweet tarts, nerds, sprees, dots, smarties, etc.).

For some reason, it just doesn't taste as good as OTHER people's candy! Plus there's that element of surprise...

Anyway, this was a big chocolate year, and although I like chocolate, it's not my favorite...Oh well...my already big bottom (and growing) doesn't need anymore temptations, so I guess it was just as well that we struck out this year with our candy stash...

We had a great time with my mom, Katie and Josie...it's nice that we have this Halloween tradition each year...The kids all had a great time (even though Reilly got sick)...

Ellie ended up getting sick yesterday, so I'm homebound with her until she's fever free for 24 hours...That soup I made a few weeks ago sure is coming in handy these days...

***Is this your most wonderful time of the year?

***What is the most creative costume you saw this year?

***Did you get any sweet tarts in your Halloween candy stash?