Corn Maze

We did Shyrock's Corn Maze on an unseasonably warm day (hence the t-shirts and shorts).

I was going to say that we only walked around in circles in the lower right quadrant, but I do remember going along the bottom of Missouri and ending up in the tiger.

Here's that open space for the tiger:

Sam diligently punching the questions at the check-points. They were really hard this year! (All related to Mizzou sports, and I don't know if we got any right of the 4 checkpoints we managed to find.)

There was mud:

and of course the kids found it:

James may or may not have fallen in. At least he was wearing appropriate shoes.

Me and Leah in the "activity barn."

One of the activities was the big corn pit (which seems like it would be very uncomfortable to me!)

There were also several rope swings and a big, two-story slide.

I got some cute pictures of Leah in her overalls in the pumpkin patch.

These two were not nearly as willing to pose for a photo opportunity:

Halloween!

Well, the Buffaloes have had a fun-filled Halloween. James ended up going as Mario:

And I impressed all of the teachers and none of the kids in the preschool class by bringing this treat for the party (I signed up for fruit/vegetable).

James had maintained for weeks and weeks that he wanted to be the video game character Ness, however - a costume that looks a whole lot like just a kid:

And Amelie wanted to be Thea, a pokemon trainer in Nina Village in Pokemon, who as best as I could figure looks something like this:

So we spent a lot of time Sunday night putting together costumes of basically just clothes and I was convinced that everyone would think they were just trick-or-treating without costumes.

James did wear the Ness costume to school one day (they had two days of parties for the kids who go Mon/Wed/Fri and the kids who go Tues/Thurs, believe it or not).

Leah wore the same pumpkin onesie that Amelie wore her 1st Halloween.

And the orange skirt my friend Liz made for us! By the way, look who's pulling up on the couch! Get out!

We carved pumpkins. The kids were pretty much in charge of their own pumpkins. I cut the tops off, then they did 90% of the cleaning out and 100% of the drawing of the design on with a marker. Sam let them cut as much as they could cut with the little cutter tool. Maybe we'll brave a real knife next year. Amelie's is on the left and is a vampire cat, inspired by the Bunnicula book she just had to read for school, and James's is on the right. I'm especially impressed with the cat scratch on one side - creative!

Here's Amelie! The other major part of her costume was her pokemon belt which held her pokeball, but you can't really see it in this picture. She says Thea would use a staff and mask during battles - I have no idea about anything related to Pokemon, so I'm just taking her word for it.

Leah looks just thrilled to be a part of this bunch, huh? 

Since our neighborhood is super-awesome for trick-or-treating, we had some friends come over to check it out. They were Thor and Valkyrie, and they walked around the loop with Sam and the big kids while I stayed home with Leah and passed out candy. 

I didn't get many pictures of Amelie, but I did take a blurry, low-light video of her describing Halloween for me, since I stayed home: 

And finally, not exactly Halloween, but we went out to grown-up dinner and dessert on Sunday for my 35th birthday. Thanks to the Buffaloes for kiddo- and baby-wrangling!