October

Well, I'm glad October is over. Not that I'm one to wish away time, but I hope November finds us healthier. With strep and stomach bugs and fevers plaguing our family, I hope it's all behind us.

We started off the month celebrating my mom, aka Meme, and all she means to us. I really do have the best mother and don't know what I would do without her. She is definitely loved very much by us all. 

We had a fun month learning all about pumpkins. 

We learned some interesting facts about pumpkins. Did you know that a smaller pumpkin can have more seeds than a bigger pumpkin? Seeds are determined by the number of lines on the pumpkin, not the size. So we started by counting the lines on our pumpkins and making predictions on how many seeds our pumpkins would have.  I already knew Lauren's would have more seeds.

Oh how I wish those pumpkins only had 8 seeds or even 200 seeds, since I was the one left counting them. 

We then measured our pumpkins with cubes. 

And put the pumpkins in water to see if they would float or sink. They did a little of both.

Then we had to cut open our pumpkins to count the seeds. This step should have been simple, but the pumpkin skin was like plastic, really, and wouldn't cut open. I seriously thought I had bought fake pumpkins because I was having so much trouble. So, when knives fail, get a hammer. 

Dallas really enjoyed this part and we finally got the pumpkins open. Kristen helped me count seeds for about 5 minutes. You don't realize how many seeds are in a pumpkin until you start counting them. And our final count was:

And yes I counted almost 1,000 pumpkin seeds. I couldn't throw them away after all of my hard work, so we roasted them. We couldn't figure out if we liked them or not. 

Some other fun facts we learned about pumpkins:

A pumpkin is a fruit.

Carving pumpkins (aka jack-o-lanterns) originated in Ireland, but they would also carve faces in root vegetables.

An average sized pumpkin weighs about 13 pounds.

The largest pumpkin ever grown was in Illinois, weighing in at 2,145 pounds. Glad I didn't have to count those seeds. 

My kids also got to do a little fishing at my aunt and uncle's house. They threw a harvest party and my kids had such a great time and were exhausted! The kids were catching fish left and right using live worms for bait. I lost count because there were so many caught.

Poor Paul was out in his boat using his fancy bait catching nothing, meanwhile the kids caught a fish pretty much every throw. It was probably the same fish who just wasn't smart enough to give up. 

Kristen was excited about carving her own pumpkin this year and kept telling me she was going to do it all by herself. Like I'm gonna argue with that. 

I ended up finishing it for her, because roasting marshmallows was a lot better than carving a pumpkin. But our joint effort turned out good. 

My sister was stuck helping Lauren carve her pumpkin. She did good concentrating and trying to make each dot perfect. Lauren, not my sister, although I'm sure her dots were perfect too.

Then Dallas found a wagon and it was a lot more fun being pulled in a wagon than carving a pumpkin.

My sister did a fabulous job carving Lauren's pumpkin. Lauren picked out the scary picture and was not going to change her mind either. 

Dallas didn't make a pumpkin. He didn't want to, so I made his for him. 

All Dallas wanted to do was drive the four wheeler. It was much nicer than his play one at home. 

We ended the month trick or treating as Raven from Ever After High, Ariel and Yoshi from Super Mario Brothers. Dallas kept saying he wasn't ready for Halloween because he didn't have green socks and was so distraught that he fell into the dish washer. Although he looks super happy in this pic, he was really crying and had tears in his eyes. 

And the most important news of the month....Dallas can write his name.