Fall Fun

Amongst all the chaos, the Cicci house made an effort to celebrate the season and enjoy some fall festivities...

We had been reading the book, "Room on the Broom" that Uncle Tony gave us on our trip to Chicago.  In it, the witch makes a brew in her big pot.  Gran found a recipe to make homemade potpourri and the kids were pretty fascinated at making our own "witches brew" and letting it simmer on the stove over the weeks that followed...

It certainly smelled delicious, with apples, oranges, lemons, and cinnamon...

We also took the kids to a Fall Festival at Lincoln Memorial Gardens...

Avery checking out the bees making honey

Lots of fun games for the kids - like the bean bag toss and putt-putt

We were lucky enough to run into Isabela and her parents and spent the rest of our time there with them!

Isabela is so sweet to the kids and takes good care of them :)

Face painting!

Pumpkin painting!

And lots of sleeping for Mr. Ben

:)



We spent some time outdoors, exploring the new yard.  The kids were so thoughtful to pick all sorts of flowers for me one afternoon...

Some of the most beautiful flowers I've ever been given...

Gran and and I took the kids to the jack-o-latern festival at Washington Park.  There were 2015 carved pumpkins!  It was incredible.  I felt like I was in the movies/tv shows with small town charm.  There was Halloween music playing, kids and adults dancing, dry ice smoke setting the scene, popcorn, hot dogs - all lit with the glow of pumpkins.  It was sort of a pain getting there and we couldn't stay long since we were traveling with a baby, but it was worth it and I'm looking forward to making a tradition of going every year.  

We bundled everyone up, dressed in our pumpkin jammies, and packed our own buckets of popcorn and "apple coffee" for the ride through...

Oh is that stroller parking??  No, it's just all my babies.

Happy kids and asleep on the way home - I call that a success!

We spent an evening making Halloween candy - ghost cookies and chocolate dipped pretzels... yum!

Happy baby!

Avery's favorite part was adding the eyes to the ghosts...

and Rudy was a champ at the sprinkles!

Check out Avery's overloaded ghost on the top left :)

We inadvertently started a "Friday night pizza party" tradition around this time.  One week was particularly stressful and really busy.  Friday afternoon came around and I was in no mood to cook and had three wide awake babies at what should have been naptime.  So I did what I was doing best and loaded them in the car for a quick ride... that ended in picking up pizza, beer, and a Halloween movie.  Max and John came home later and we were all exhausted.  But that pizza party was just what the doctor ordered.  And so when the next Friday night rolled around, guess what sounded good to all of us?! 

Nothing says Halloween like pumpkin carving!  We decided to add in some pumpkin carving and Halloween decorating on this particular Friday night.  Gran joined us and got stuck doing some of the dirty work.  

Of course I forgot to buy the special tools that make it easy, so John and Max (well, Lindi) were stuck doing it the old fashioned way...

Checking things out...



Our completed pumpkins, proudly on display

Gran also brought supplies for making monster faces on the kitchen windows.  The kids got such a kick out of it (and I failed to get a finished picture)

We spent some afternoons at Gran and Papa's watching football and grilling hot dogs.

One day I took the kids by the "yucky house" to bring a picnic lunch to the guys working.  It was a beautiful fall day and my favorite tree of the house was looking just perfect.  Our ginko tree is the most perfect color yellow during the fall and the way it hangs over our courtyard, it covers every inch with yellow leaves (John can't stand it, mostly because he has to be the one to clean them up!).  Last year the tree never changed colors - we had an odd fall that was basically skipped because it turned cold too fast.  I remember thinking that day, "I love this stupid house."

We had Rudy's first classroom party.  I was picked to be a Room Mom this year and I was thrilled!  I've always wanted to be a Room Mom and it's been a lot of fun planning the parties and being a part of the fun!!

We started the party out with cookies and juice boxes for a treat...



Then we had a few "stations" set up with different activities.  John crafted this awesome putt-putt course for the kids.. it was quite a hit!!  

We also had pin the face on the jack-o-latern

and a Halloween craft.

And last but not least, free-style dancing!

It was such chaos, but we all had fun!