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The girls and I have been spending a lot of time together during the remodel… in one room… for hours… sometimes, we get silly to amuse ourselves…

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Everything moved out of the living room…

And into the bedroom…

And then the living room floor went away.

We found a few strange things under the floor.

Chris has been crawling all over under the house to find/fix things while we have the big, giant hole in the house.

We’re finally in the “put back on” phase of the big floor project!

We headed off to Spooner’s Farms in the valley last week with CareBear’s preschool class. It rained something awful the day before, but we lucked out with a sunny (if somewhat muddy) day!

Tractor ride to the pumpkin patch!

CareBear got a little splinter from the stem of her pumpkin.

LiliBee is very proud of her pick.

Ride ’em, LiliBee!

Into the patch!

Pumpkin heads.

We meet a big spider…

And play in the rope maze…

And do a bit of sliding.

A good and muddy time.

I love Halloween, so everyone gets to look at pictures of our decorations! I didn’t get pictures of some of the big spiders or the stuff hanging in our trees, but you get the idea…

The yard:

The porch:

Pumpkin decorating!

LiliBee likes the eyeball stickers.

CareBear is putting on her face.

The finished pumpkins.

Darth LiliBee.

CareBear heads off in search of candy.

Come on, LiliBee!

Trick or treat!

And we’re off again.

We’ve had a busy and productive week around here…

In remodel news, the new floor is done in two of the bedrooms and part of the hallway. The guys have spent the past several days scraping up linoleum and working on the living room floor. We decided to raise it up instead of leaving it sunk-in and that led to all kinds of extra work on beams and ducts under the house. We made a few unexpected discoveries but the decking is being put back on today so we can move on! My kitchen is practically unusable and all of our doorways are covered with plastic, but at least the end is in sight.

In fun news, CareBear had her first field trip! Her preschool class took a trip to Spooner’s farm and LiliBee and I were able to tag along. We learned how pumpkins and corn grow and what bees and bats do to help. We took a ride on a tractor around the corn maze and to the little pumpkin patch that they set aside for school kids. We visited with goats, chickens, turkey and rabbits and climbed on straw bales. After a quick snack, we headed out into the main pumpkin patch to run around, which was really muddy! The girls checked out the spiders and mud puddles and the rope maze before we headed home with our little pumpkins and mud up to our knees. The weather was actually pretty nice and all of the kids had a great time.

It was, of course, Halloween on Saturday. We decorated our pumpkins with stickers handily donated by one of my former co-workers. CareBear made a great face on hers while LiliBee went for a more abstract use of almost all of the eyeball stickers. CareBear could hardly wait for trick or treating this year. She started asking to put on her costume around noon. LiliBee was unsure of what the big fuss was, but she’s always willing to go along with her big sister’s enthusiasm. CareBear debated for a few weeks before deciding on a costume this year… and ended up with the same dragon costume as last year! It’s a little shorter on her, of course, but she was thrilled with it. LiliBee dressed up as Darth Vader and impressed everyone with her jedi mind tricks. They made a pretty good candy run going to the few houses around us and over at my folks’ house. CareBear loved helping Pas hand out candy to their numerous trick or treaters while LiliBee used my camera to take pictures of each of her pieces of candy, for some reason.

LiliBee and I went to a fun little candle party Saturday morning. She charmed everyone and even found a little boyfriend who couldn’t stop hugging her! Meanwhile, Chris took CareBear to gymnastics class… he tells me that the holiday sugar high created extra chaos in the class but at least everyone had fun.

In Banjo news, we went to our first big ultrasound last week. Since I’m considered “advanced maternal age”, we automatically do the level 2 ultrasound at the perinatology office. Banjo has all of the usual body parts in all of the usual places! We’ll be going back in a few weeks so that they can get a really good look at the heart and face (Banjo stopped cooperating toward the end), but everything looks good so far. And, before you all start wondering, we’re still going to be surprised about the gender. We did get a few ultrasound pictures but I haven’t had a chance to scan them so I won’t be able to share until next week.

Onward to November…