Harvest Festival and Halloween

Our ward had their Harvest (or Fall) Festival on October 28th.  Jon went as Charlie Brown, I was a Soil Scientist (people were actually able to guess it this year instead of just thinking I was a doctor), James was a doctor, and Jacob was a candy corn.

There was a Chili and Soup Cook Off.  My chili actually won first place!  I was really shocked.  I have been making the same chili for about 5 years.  Sometimes doing something different.  This year I did not do anything special.  Maybe it was the new ward and unbiased judges.  Jon thinks it was the home canned beans that my mom and I (mostly my mom) canned at the beginning of October.  So we won a ladle!  Jon also won 3 of 5 squashes.  You had to tell the name of the squash and the weight.  I told Jon what the names were (I had recently looked at different squashes at the grocery store to try), and he guessed the weight.  James loved the Cookie/Cupcake walk,

the bean bag toss, and pin the nose on the pumpkin.  He had really wanted to go on the hay ride, but got too into monopolizing the bean bags that we missed it.  James also had a lot of fun with his friend Sheridan.

It was a fun night!  James did not want to leave, but it was well passed his bed time.

Monday night, I took James Trick-or-Treating in our neighborhood, while Jon and Jacob stayed home to hand out candy.  James was good about saying "Trick-or-treat," "Thank you," "I'm Dr. James," "Bye-bye," and "See you next time."  Everyone seemed to get a kick out of how cute he was.  Once he saw that he would get candy at the houses we went to, he wanted to go to every house.  He kept saying, "Another house," the minute we left a door.  It seems our neighborhood is a popular place for people to come.  We bought a lot of candy for the night hoping for leftover, but we were out of candy by 7:50 p.m.  That was even after raiding James' candy and the candy my mom had sent us.  We turned off our lights and went downstairs to Skype with Grandma Felt.  Next year we will have to get more candy to start with.  I look forward to more years of taking my boys trick-or-treating.  After we finally got James to bed, Jon and I watched Signs.