Fall is underway and winter is visible on the horizon. Leaves change, leaves fall, children are at play. Leaves gone, cold comes, inside the children stay.

Chloe dressed herself up as a zombie quite a few times this month. Here are a couple of highlights from her newest game. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, Mike received his Bear award.

Cornbelly’s! The kids love their annual visit to this backwards celebration of corn stalks and hay. There’s always plenty to do- slides, mazes, paintball, wagon rides…

hot chocolate, caramel popcorn, the corn box (like a sand box, but with corn!) and so much more. The adults usually hit Cornbelly’s as well but I was sick this go around. Next year!

The Sabins held their annual Halloween party- it keeps getting bigger and better each year (eventually they will have to move to accommodate this party). In addition to the usual outrageous decorations and exciting activities our generous steam punk dressed  hosts provided a Waffle Love truck and Rachel took family pictures of the attendees! Our little one was very grumpy and this year we retired early, but come 2014 we will be back with an unholy vengeance.

This year the kids decided to buy some fancy higher end pumpkins. The ghost pumpkins were really cool, but this green one (Mike’s) turned out to have skin that was about two inches thick. It was so difficult for me to carve that I ended up not even doing my own pumpkin.

I think all the kids had fun going out trick or treating. This was the first year that Chloe really understood what was going on (although she didn’t really notice when all her candy disappeared). Mike and Claire ate everything you see here, while Gabe opted to trade out his candy for cash (“I don’t want to get sick” he wisely said).

Fran gets pretty festive for Halloween. Nail decorations and special spooky treats abound-pumpkin shakes, ghost toast, swamp smoothies, seaweed octopus soup and dry ice beaker brew (I wish I could cram more pictures in here, but there’s only so much room).