Dressing Up Is Fun to Do

Wow, did we have a fun-packed, sugar-crazed "Pumpkin Day" this year! It all started with a Fall Festival at the church where O and I have AWANAs.

Having Yaya join us made it even more special!

Owie's favorite game this year was the golfing game. The kid has got some serious skills. I have a suspicion that a real golf club is in his near future!

Noah was a pretty intense golfer too.

And here's what happened when he had to hand off his club.

O loved the pony rides again this year! The ponies were a bit skittish though, and screeched to a halt twice due to us. (I've never seen Jeremy blush quite like that!) First, O's wrench fell out of his apron, startling the pony. Secondly, his hard hat blew right off his head and the pony stopped dead in his tracks. Oh well. Owen didn't seem to notice or mind.

Nosy, who opted out of the pony ride, spent his time trying to figure out how to get to all of O's candy.

Later in the week, the Halpin and Amezcua girls all congregated at Mimi and Gongi's to parade our babies in costume.

I think Noah is eating a different cookie in every picture taken at Mimi's. Does that tell you anything about how our evening progressed?

O and Mia have so much fun together!

Handsome, photogenic Will. Those are sister's Minnie Mouse ears, but he can sure pull the look off!

Sweet hugs from Mia...and another cookie.

Oliver checks out the decor.

Ally is always happy to pose.

Maddie and O...and a little bit of Oliver

On Pumpkin Day night, we headed to First Baptist Garland for more Fall Fest fun. Gigi and Papa made a fun time even better!

This slide that was a bit too scary for rather timid O last year was hardly even a challenge this year! My big brave Boy.

Before long, Jeremy was sporting half of Owie's costume.

The favorite game tonight? Basketball!

Thanks for the boost, Papa!

We got great use out of our costumes this year and had a blast hanging out with family and friends.

Ode to Eric Carle

Mr. Carle has gone and done it again: written and illustrated a book my kids can not hear enough times. It is such a great story about a boy who just wants a pancake for breakfast, but his mom requires that he gather all the ingredients from around the farm before they start cooking. He does everything from grind the wheat to churn the butter, foreign practices to my kids who assume food grows at Walmart. In honor of Pancakes, Pancakes, I decided to serve breakfast for dinner to celebrate the making of a pancake. Because of the season, we fancied it up a bit by trying pumpkin pancakes.

Two eager helpers

Noah had me laughing as he watched O crack this egg. He could hardly wait to see just what was inside the hard, cold, white shell.

O mixed the dry ingredients while Nosy was in charge of the wet. What master chefs I have!

Before long though, the mixing became more like playing.


The pancakes were delicious, the best I have ever had, so good that I neglected snapping a picture before dinner. Our whole meal was scrumptious and will be repeated soon: pumpkin pancakes topped with maple syrup, salty hash browned potatoes, crisp bacon and scrambled eggs.


We reheated the pancakes in the toaster the next morning, and they were every bit as great as the night before. (Not sure why Owie is "hooking his horns" first thing on a Friday morning...)

Here's the recipe for the pancakes if anyone wants to give them a try. I think they'd be even heartier with whole wheat flour. Yum!

One More Time

We just can't get enough of the Arboretum around here. It's gorgeous and safe for the kids to run around with a certain level of freedom. We headed back down there one last time before the pumpkins disappeared.

Our friends were running a tad late, but never fear, amazing adventures can always be found at the Arbo. We headed to our favorite off road spot to explore.

Such a cute picture, if it weren't for the fact that he is hanging by a chain from the neck.

Before we knew it, Chrys, Oliver and Truett joined us and we headed to the pumpkin patch. Today, the Boys spent the majority of their time rolling around in the hay from the disintegrating hay bale maze. Both of my kiddos resembled scarecrows by the time we left, and I probably could have formed my very own hay bale with the hay covering my living room floor where they shed their shoes and clothes!

Harvest Breads: The Good & the Bad

Even the faintest chill in the air turns on the baking mood in me! I love to have the house warm and yummy smelling. And I never have a problem finishing off the sweets laying around the house. I am up to the challenge! This week, we had a horrible and a great baking experience.

We had friends scheduled to come over for a play date, and I had the wonderful idea of popping a loaf of homemade zucchini bread in the oven for us to snack on while they were here. While Noah napped, O and I took turns shredding up a few zucchini and mixing together all the yummy ingredients. Oh, the house smelled delicious when our friends arrived, and my mouth was watering with anticipation! When the timer went off, I pulled the lovely loaf from the oven and allowed it cool for a bit before slicing into its warm goodness. The inside was completely RAW! The gooey batter oozed all over the counter. This could not be right! I quickly turned the oven back on and baked the bread a bit longer, but by the time the middle was done, the outside was burnt to a crisp. I was so embarrassed not to have a treat to offer my friends and disappointed after I was so looking forward to a slice of warm zucchini bread. We will have to have another attempt soon!

At the end of the week (I washed O's shirt in between, I promise!), the Boys and I tried a new recipe for pumpkin bread, my favorite of the harvest breads! In the middle of the loaf is a sweet swirl of cream cheese greatness.

I think the Boys had more fun cleaning up after me than helping!



It turned out SO YUMMY! I will definitely make this recipe again and again!

So you win some, you lose some, but baking with the kids continues to be one of my favorite activities. Well, the baking and the eating! My waist line may be suffering, but my mouth is very happy!

Pumpkin Carving: Take 2

We are not easily daunted around The House of Halpin, so the fact that we did not succeed at the easy task of pumpkin carving at our first attempt had me bothered. After carving the tops off of seemingly millions of pumpkins for our church's carving event, I realized a few things:

We did not have a the right type of pumpkin to carve before. (Thanks also to Family Snippets for pointing this out to me. I'd never have known!)

We did not have proper carving tools.

We remedied both of these and set out to try, try again.

We found a Mickey Mouse template to lay on top of our pumpkin so we could carve a cute face. While I worked on carving the front, O was hard at work gouging little holes into the back of the pumpkin. Kept us both busy!


Meanwhile, Nosy entertained himself by playing with pumpkin innards.

He also assisted me in washing and drying the pumpkin seeds to try the whole roasting thing again.

We could hardly wait to see what our glowing pumpkin would look like. Alas, it was about 10:00am with the sunlight streaming through all of our windows. Never fear! We all paraded into my closet with Mickey leading the way.

The three of us were thrilled with how our pumpkin turned out, front and back! However, as we proudly showcased it to Daddy, he mistakened Mickey for a pig. A pig?! I guess I can see it...if the big circles (Mickey's ears) were piggy eyes and Mickey's face was a piggy snout. So I'm no artist, but we all enjoyed ourselves!

Hooray! We did it! We can carve a pumpkin!

Now that a few days have passed, we are learning about decay. More on that to come...(I know you can hardly wait!)

Mr. Fix It

At your service!

The Land of 1,000 Pumpkins

I mentioned earlier on my blog about The Springs Church's goal to break the World Record for the most number of people carving a pumpkin at one time. The current record was 965. After many weeks of planning, preparation and prayer, the weekend of our outreach was finally here. We were prepared for 1,000 enthusiastic pumpkin carvers.

Take a peek at Saturday set-up day. What a fun, hot, hard-working day!

O and Nosy shared water bottles to keep away the thirst.

The guys got into a great rhythm with their assembly line system of laying out the pumpkins. The girls would go behind them to space and straighten all the pumpkins.

Noah watches the action

So many pumpkins all in a row.

After awhile, we all started to feel a little like this:

Except for the big boys,

who had a blast playing in a shady pumpkin box...

...and directing traffic along Murphy Road. Eventually I noticed that cars were actually slowing nearly to a stop before realizing that it was just some kids holding up the stop sign. We had to have a little talk about the dangers of causing traffic.

That's a whole lot of pumpkins!

One of the ladies brought a yummy, bright orange cake to share with us. When my back was turned, guess who dove right into that cake...literally!

He was COVERED in orange gooeyness.

After lining all the pumpkins up in rows, we went back and removed the tops and some of the "guts" to make carving the next day easier. Lorie so patiently demonstrated her technique for the curious boys.

Pumpkin races

We are READY!!!

Early the next morning, we all arrived at Southfork Ranch filled with nervous anticipation.

It was such a beautiful crisp morning. The boys warmed up with chocolate donuts...

...and Stephanie snuggles.

Owen kept an eye out for the cars to begin arriving.

Before we knew it, it was time to start carving!!

I love this picture of Julianne and Mia.

O did a very impressive job carving all by himself!

We didn't quite break the record, but we learned so much as a church and had a lot of fun. There is nothing like working really hard with people to form a lasting bond. The current record holders had better beware. Next year we will blow the old record away!