Trick or Treat!

What a beautiful Halloween night! Ten times better than the dreary, rainy weather we have had all week. Olivia made a GORGEOUS Cinderella, and Joey was a fierce Darth Vader. He played the part well because he refused to smile in his costume. I often got the look of "what is the deal with dressing up, knocking on doors, and people giving us food?" When we went out trick or treating, he became Darth Elmo, because I forced him to wear a warm hat with his costume.

We had a night full of excitement. First, we went to Jason's work and visited for awhile. All of his colleagues love Livi and Joey and wanted to see their costumes. Then, we went to visit one of Olivia's best friends from church. Miss Joann is an elderly woman at church that loves Livi and Joey. She and Olivia clicked from the start talking about Livi's pretty dresses, painting her nails, and her "pretties." The minute we walk into church Olivia looks for Miss Joann and has to visit with her after church. So we stopped at Miss Joann's house to visit for awhile and show her Livi and Joey's costumes. After Miss Joann's house, we met Grandma and Jim at our house for a pizza party. Grandma and Jim hung out at our house passing out candy. As always, Livi and Joey loved spending time with them! Finally, we went out trick or treating in our neighborhood. We met up with Livi's friend "Jillybean" (aka. Jillian) and walked around with them. Then we headed over to her best friends Colleen, Brooke, and Ashley's house for some play time.

Phewww!!!! What a busy, but very fun night!!!

It's the Great Pumpkin Olivia and Joey!

To Olivia and Joey's surprise, the Great Pumpkin made a stop by our house last night and left Livi and Joey a few treats. Olivia was elated to see that the Great Pumpkin remembered her and Joey. He left them Halloween books, Halloween socks, Halloween cups and bowls, and a few treats.

After opening up their pumpkin baskets, everyone got dressed and had a delicious breakfast with orange rolls (special for Halloween) and daddy's favorite...cinnamon rolls. What a great way to start your Halloween day!

Olivia's First Fall Party

On Thursday, Olivia had her first fall party at school. She could not wait to go to school and see what this fall party was all about. She had a blast and could not stop talking about it. To make things even better, she got a huge treat bag FULL of yummy treats! We are blessed to have such a great preschool so close and glad that Olivia has adjusted so well to school!

Olivia's Open House

On Tuesday evening, Joey, Olivia, and I went to Olivia's open house at her preschool. To say that Olivia was excited to show Joey and I all of her school projects and all of her favorite activities is an understatement! It was a lot of fun seeing Olivia with all of her classmates and being able to meet the parents. Here are some of Olivia's projects that she told me to blog so everyone could see them.

Leaf Man; Owl; Special book page

Scrapbook page (I made); Olivia's job; Olivia's name tag

Monster; What Olivia goes to first thing...shoes!

Joey thinking school looks fun!

Weeee!

Weeee!....was the only thing Joey wanted to say today when we went outside to play in the leaves. This past week we had another cold snap and rain which finally made the leaves begin to fall from the trees. So Livi, Joey, and I took advantage of a beautiful afternoon and went outside to jump in the leaves. I raked the leaves into a pile at the bottom of the slide so Livi and Joey could slide right into them. They had a blast! Even Ollie and Bella joined in on the fun.

After playing on the playground and jumping in the leaves, Livi and I filled our pumpkin bags full of leaves to make Olivia and Joey pumpkins. Olivia was thrilled that there was a pumpkin named Olivia. What a great way to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon!

The Heiple Pumpkins 2009

As promised last week, here are the Heiple pumpkins carved for Halloween.

From left to right, Jason's pumpkin, my pumpkin, Olivia's pumpkin, and Joey's pumpkin.

We had a lot of fun cleaning out and carving our pumpkins while watching the traditional "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," and "Garfield's Halloween." Olivia was much braver this year touching the "skunk" aka gunk. Joey wouldn't touch the stuff, he just looked at us like we were crazy. He did on the other hand enjoy taking his pumpkin top off and putting it back on. He is very into taking lids off of things and putting them back on. Jason worked extremely hard on Olivia's Minnie Mouse pumpkin. He had to trace out the picture then cut it out... Olivia was thrilled! Go Daddy! The rest of the pumpkins were free hand.

We are now officially ready for Halloween night. Next week you will get to see our beautiful Cinderella and scary (yet very cute) Darth Vader go trick or treating!

The Great Pumpkin Search

Today, Jas and I brought Olivia and Joey to The Apple Barn to find the 2009 Heiple pumpkins. I don't know which was more challenging, finding four pumpkins that everyone liked, or getting Olivia and Joey to both smile in the picture. Nonetheless, we had a good time and found the best pumpkins there. We also treated ourselves to fresh pastries. Stay tuned for our blog next week when we carve our pumpkins!