999: Happy Halloween!

 Hey!  This is my 999th post.  Wow!
Well, we had a great Halloween.
We had lessons in the morning/afternoon as usual.  By around 3:30 PM the boys were cleaning out pumpkin guts and getting ready for the evening's festivities.
The boys were pretty creative in their pumpkin designs this year, and between helping them, I didn't get to our traditional pineapple jack-o-lantern.  I did the watermelon, just no pineapple.  Oh well, next year!
Ben took the boys out trick-or-treating and I stayed home handing out candy.  We had more trick-or-treaters this year than we ever have!  It was really fun.  Joseph has this motorized bat that flaps its wings and flies around on a string you hang from the ceiling.  He hung it up above the front patio and it was irresistible to all the little kids coming by.  They all had to come and stare at it up close.
The boys stayed out for about an hour I think, then came home and watched "The Great Pumpkin" on the computer before finally being persuaded to go to bed.
Here are the pictures!
When the boys told me they wanted to be British red coats, I was a bit worried.  There are no children's sized British red coat costume patterns, so I had to find another pattern and modify it.  They turned out well, although they took a long time to make.  I finished listening to 3 audio books while making these.  :-)  ("The Worst Hard Time," "The History of US volume 1," and "The Forgotten 500" for the record.  All very good books.)
Over the past week or so, the boys have been wearing their costumes almost every day.  It's really gratifying to see how much they like them!  Also funny to see them going about their normal day in costume.  :-)
Here's Mosey working on some spelling.

And Joseph practicing his flute.  He actually looks like an army fife here, I think!

This picture made me laugh-- look what he's reading!  We're studying the Revolutionary War right now, so it is great timing.

Last Saturday was our ward's trunk-or-treat at the park.
Here are the three British regulars!

Anyone need children's British redcoat costumes?  I've got three!

Marching off in-step to interrogate the rest of the crowd about their loyalty to King George.  If they were not sufficiently enthusiastic in their professions of loyalty, they were shot without mercy!

 I tried to get a couple of individual pictures of each of the boys.  Here's Captain Brigham Turner:

And Lieutenant Moses Turner.  He takes this all very seriously!

I didn't get an individual shot of Joseph (he slipped away mysteriously), but here's a candid during dinner:

And Colonel Joseph Turner with Lieutenant Mosey.

There were also a number of pirates there, which the boys were quick to capture and demand to see their letters of marque.  If they didn't have them?  Bam!
Here's one about to lose his loot to Brigham.

Anyway, that was a fun night.
Now for tonight.  Here are the boys getting ready to head out trick-or-treating.

And the pumpkin masterpieces.
Joseph carved a pumpkin pi.  Get it?  :-)  He just finished a unit on finding the area and circumference of circles, so pi was on his mind.  I thought he was very clever to think of it!

You can't see it in the picture above (it was still a little light out when I took that picture), but pi was also written around the top of the pumpkin-- to the 26th decimal place!

Here's a little better shot when it was darker.

 

Brigham carved a British Regular on his pumpkin.  He made the design and carved it out all on his own.

 

Here he is with his masterpiece.

Mosey found a wolf pattern online and carved about half of it himself.  We don't have any good pumpkin carving knifes, so I thought he did a really good job.

And here's my watermelon jack-o-lantern.  No pineapple buddy this year!

So that was it!  I hope everybody else had a fun Halloween.  Let the sugar-fest begin!