Sunday, October 20, 2013

continuing our halloween tradition.

so every year since charlie and i have been dating we've always carved pumpkins and made riceballs for halloween.  we haven't always done it on the actual holiday and we have missed two years in the last nine.  i think the second year we were together we didn't continue the tradition and we missed last year because we were back in maryland for the two weekends before halloween visiting family and friends.  i was looking back on some pictures from that trip the other day and it really made me miss the east coast falls.  so pretty.  

anyway, we knew we definitely wanted to keep up the tradition this year since avery was old enough to get the whole carving a pumpkin idea and because she's really into pumpkins.  we actually have a ridiculous amount of pumpkins sitting on our porch currently.  i think the count for 'big' pumpkins is up to six as charlie didn't want to carve any of our pumpkins that we got from the pumpkin patch.  we actually picked up two more from whole foods, which shockingly had the lowest price for pumpkins that i've seen.  

avery was totally into the idea of carving them and helped me pick out the seeds and put them into a bowl for roasting.  we carved two pumpkins and avery and i did most of the cleaning out of the seeds work since charlie was making the riceballs.

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once i showed her what to do she was all about it and helped for a really long time.  after cleaning out the pumpkins she took a break for a bit to play with dunkin.  she is really into him these days and it's so cute to see her hang out with him like he's her buddy.  i think he secretly likes her, too, especially because she's always trying to go outside and play ball with him. 
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she likes to grab his nose and say 'honk, honk'.  he doesn't love this.

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meanwhile, charlie was cooking the riceballs.  we probably should have gotten her more involved in this process as she really does like to cook and bake, but it's just so messy and there are so many uncooked ingredients like meat and eggs that i think it would be harder to have her 'help' at this point.  maybe next year.
  
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and avery got bored again and went outside to play with dunkin.  or actually she went outside and then insisted that he come and play with her.  we had gorgeous weather on saturday.  it was in the mid 60s and it was so nice to have a few windows open while we were hanging out.

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looking for his ball.

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she settled for throwing a flower. 

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tackle. 

we finally finished carving our pumpkins and cooking the riceballs.  i always forget how long this process takes!  the riceballs were delicious as always and avery loved having the candles in the pumpkins.  we put them back outside and hopefully they won't get destroyed by any animals before halloween so we can light them again. 

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charlie's is the cat that he did for avery and mine is the face.  i should have made it a nose but i ran out of carving motivation and thought it still worked this way.  i've loved the fact that we've been able to do something fun and fall-like each weekend in october.  it's such an awesome time of year when there's fun things to do, the weather is perfect, and there's not the pressure of the holidays to decorate the house or bake fancy meals or buy a bunch of presents.  i really do love the holidays but sometimes i love the low-key ones more because there's not a lot of pressure to do anything special so anything that you end up doing is a lot of fun.  we've got one more weekend in october to enjoy and i think we're taking avery to a halloween party where she does gymnastics.  i did buy her a costume although she's been pretty adamant about not wearing it so we'll see if she actually dresses up for it.      

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