Halloween Festivities, Part 2

I finally had a little time to continue on with all the fun things we've been doing for Halloween this year...

On Friday, we met up with our friends Kati and Tony for some shopping, lunch, and mall walking at Great Lakes Crossing.  We all rode the carousel while we were there.  It was baby Tony's first ride!  He seemed pretty confused, but did great! 

On Saturday, we headed up to the Flint Institute of Arts for some Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) fun.  The kids got to trick-or-treat through the art museum.  Carson really enjoyed looking at all of the art.  It's a pretty big museum for a little boy, though, so he was getting a little worn out towards the end of it... he just wanted to go make some crafts.  :) 

So we went into the art school and got to make some cool Halloween crafts.  We decorated a bag.  Carson drew the ghost on white tissue paper all by himself.  Then Sara put some glue on the bag in the shape of a pumpkin while Carson crinkled up pieces of orange and green tissue paper to put on the glue to form the pumpkin.  Carson wanted to add some hair to the top of the bag, so he cut out a purple fringe to glue at the top.  It turned out pretty cute!  Carson decided to use it as a gift bag for Great Poppy - to help him feel better since he's been having some pretty bad back problems caused from a fall. 

Then we made a dancing skeleton mask.  Carson drew the face on completely by himself.  The only thing he needed help with was cutting the face out and putting glue at the top for the streamer hair.  He cut the streamers and decorated everything all by himself.  He did such a great job! 

Then we got to make a skull out of clay.  Sara formed the skull shape (sort of), and Carson poked the eyes and nose, but wanted Sara to do the mouth.  Then Carson colored it all.  In a few days, it'll be dry and hard. 

After the FIA, we headed out to Crossroads Village for some trick-or-treating.  We had hoped to ride the train, as well, but by the time we arrived, the next available train was 4 1/2 hours later!  We decided to skip the train this time and return another time to ride it - maybe at Christmas.  We all had a lot of fun trick-or-treating and taking lots of fun pictures.  Carson got to ride the carousel and the kiddie train, so that made up for not riding the steam train. 

Halloween Festivities, Part 1

We've been enjoying so many awesome Halloween activities this year.  Carson is at such a great age for all of the different festivities and it makes it extra fun right now.  We're also trying to make sure Carson enjoys lots of different Halloween things this year since we're going to miss out on our tradition of trick-or-treating with Anna, Joel, and Jonah on Halloween.  We're all pretty bummed about that, but Sara has to attend and present at a conference for work on November 1st and 2nd in Niagara Falls, Ontario, so she had to travel on Halloween.  Kevin and Carson have since decided to tag along for the trip, so they'll miss out on trick-or-treating, as well.  Therefore, we made the most of Halloween doing lots of other fun things this year and we're looking forward to a few fun days in Niagara. 

We started out our week of fun stuff last Sunday.  We met up with all of the Holleboom cousins at Potter Park Zoo in Lansing for Boo at the Zoo.  We got to see a few animals, do a little trick-or-treating, and mostly just catch up with everyone and have fun.  It was so cute to see all the cousins together in their costumes.  They all looked adorable!  They had so much fun together, too.  They held each other's hands through most of the zoo, pratically, and were just super excited to be together.  We'll have to try to make a point to get the cousins together for a Halloween activity every year because they just had so much fun! 

Carson had a Costume Party at preschool on Thursday.  He got to wear his costume to school and parents were invited into the classroom at 10:30 for some fun, so Sara went in for that before heading to work.  Carson's class had a costume parade through the church and got to go trick-or-treating in the main office and at each of the pastors' offices.  We got to catch the tail end of the costume parade and then went into the classroom.  The kids sang us several fall-themed songs they've been learning.  You could tell they were all so proud of themselves - as well as all the parents being proud of them!  :)  Then the kids all sat down at their tables and got to decorate sugar cookies.  Then it was time to show the parents some of their favorite things around the classroom.  And then it was already time to say goodbye.  Carson's teacher, Mrs. Hans, was dressed up as Cat in the Hat, and her helpers Mrs. Dahms and Mrs. Clor, were dressed up as Thing 1 and Thing 2.  So of course, we had to snap a picture with our own Cat in the Hat.  :) 

That's it for now... more to come soon about more of the fun things we've done for Halloween this year!

On the banks of the Red Cedar...

On the banks of the Red Cedar, there's a school that's known to all;
Its specialty is winning, and those Spartans play good ball;
Spartan teams are never beaten, all through the game they fight;
Fight for the only colors: GREEN and WHITE.
Go right through for MSU, watch the points keep growing,
Spartan teams are bound to win, they're fighting with a vim!
Rah! Rah! Rah!
See their team is WEAKening,
We're going to win this game,
Fight! Fight! Rah! Team, Fight!
VICTORY for MSU!!!

This past weekend was MSU's Homecoming weekend.  We played Wisconsin and after being told by just about everyone that we had no chance... we WON with a Hail Mary pass at the end and an instant replay call!!!!  Yeah!!  Go SPARTANS!!!  :)

We decided to tailgate for the game on Saturday, even though we did not end up buying tickets.  Earlier in the season, we had planned to... but then they announced the game would be at 8:00 and that was just too late of a game for Carson.  So we just went to tailgate and see some fellow Spartans that we hadn't seen in awhile.  This was actually our first time setting up our own tailgate.  Generally we just go and wander around campus, visiting everyone we know.  So this was a totally different type of experience for us.  It was a lot of fun, though!  And it's something we'll do every year now. 

It was kind of nice having the night game in terms of tailgating.  It was nice to be able to sleep in and take it easy in the morning since the tailgating rules don't allow you to start tailgating till 1:00.  So we headed to East Lansing in the afternoon.  We met up with the Spadas and our friends Denny and Kristi from Atlanta when we got into town and we all caravaned onto campus.  Of course, campus is super congested every football Saturday, and is especially so for Homecoming.  The lots we were hoping to get into were full by 1:05.  We were the next car to get in at two of the lots when they closed them down.  So we ended up across from the Breslin and it actually ended up being quite perfect! 

We set up our spot and got to business eating, drinking, and socializing.  We played some ladder golf and threw the football around, too.  We all pitched in on the food and we ended up having so much!  Yet most of it actually ended up getting eaten.  Of course, we did have 7 hours to graze.  :) 

About half-way through the tailgate, Denny and I took off to find some fellow Phikes that we knew were on campus... and to find the Phi Chi Theta tailgate over by the tennis courts (student area).  The tennis courts were busy and crazy, as usual... though there did seem to be a huge damper on a lot of activities with the huge police presence.  And there was an obvious absense of many activities that used to be allowed when we went to school at State.  We finally found the Phi Chi tailgate, introduced ourselves to the current actives and pledges that were there, and met up with a few Phi Chi alum.  It was great to catch up with some old friends and meet the new generation of Phikes... though we did all agree that they're kinda lame compared to our generation... definitely no A-listers.  ;-P 

It was a great day of tailgating and awesome to be energized with Spartan Spirit!  And it was wonderful to catch up with old friends!  We look forward to tailgating more next year... and are actually very tempted to go again this year if we didn't already have crazy busy weekends on the remaining home football weekends.  So I think we'll be putting it off till next year for now. 

GO GREEN!!  GO WHITE!!

FALLing for you...

Today was a perfect fall day, so we took full advantage and spent the entire day outdoors.  After all the wind we've had, many of the leaves on some of our trees had blown off, so we had a lot of leaves to clean up.  We raked some into a pile for Carson to play in.  He has been looking forward to playing in the leaves since the first leaf fell.  Seriously.  He loves it.  :) 

Carson and I made some ghosts, so we finally had the chance to hang some in the tree in front.  Carson loves ghosts this year.  He gets a kick out of them and came up with this project all on his own. 

After awhile, Carson's friend and our neighbor, Jace, saw us out and came over to play for a few hours.  Carson and Jace have a lot of fun together.  Jace is about 9 months older than Carson, but they get along and play really well together.  Today, they had fun playing in the leaves, riding Jace's Jeep around the yard, playing on the swingset and in the playhouse, and just romping around the yard.  We went back and picked the ripe raspberries, which is one of Carson's favorite things to do these days.  He and Jace ate every single berry we picked, though!  :)  It was a super fun day!