This is Halloween, This Is Halloween

That was Lorelai and her Kinderchoir class performing "BOO!" at the Sahuarita Stake Talent Show (she's the princess in blue on the left--you know, the one wiggling in excitement. Afterwards, she was disappointed she only got to sing "one" song. There'll be other chances, kid).

But that was just the beginning of our 2010 Halloween season. And, like every Halloween, it's not complete unless you've got a few pumpkins laying around. So, off we went!

This year, we traveled to Buckelew Farms (about 40 minutes west of Tucson) to select our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. There was a lot to do there, including a craft fair, food & drink, a hay bale mountain, and a new corn maze (you can see the maze in the background of the picture above. I've never seen a corn maze where the corn was STILL GROWING. Only in AZ, I guess). After looking around a bit, we hitched a ride in the hay wagon and drove out to the pumpkin patch:

Once we got to the pumpkin patch, it didn't take long for the girls to pick out their pumpkins. They were blessedly small (and thus, easier to carry back to the car!)

What a lovely pose! For some reason, Lorelai likes to do the "potrait studio" beauty pose for every photo I take (head tilted, hands clasped together like so). She is quite the ham.

So nice of Buckelew Farms to drive us back to the entrance with our pumpkins!

A few days later, for Family Home Evening, it was carving time...Daddy did the honors.

First, tracing a face on each pumpkin...and then attacking them with the knife!

The finished products; don't they look cute on our porch!

Other Halloween-related activities included a special trick-or-treat storytime at the local library. Celeste attended in costume!

The kids all weaved between bookshelves, while library employees waited at key junctures, handing out Halloween stickers & jewelry. Cute!!

That same night, our ward had their annual Trunk or Treat, complete with a kids' fair.

Fishing for prizes...

...and a cakewalk were a few of the activities. Then, it was outside to the dark, chilly parking lot, for trunk-or-treating and hot chocolate!

A couple of days later, it was party time at Lorelai's school!

This featured a costume parade that included the whole school! It was fun to see all the neat costumes...

...including those of the younger siblings, like Celeste and this adorable luchadora who befriended her briefly.

That night was another school-related activity--it was Great Expectations Academy's first ever Halloween Carnival, with treats, games, & prizes! All the kids went in costume & had a wonderful time.


Here's one last look at our girls' costumes this year:

Lorelai was Cinderella--a convenient choice, since we had this dress in our dress-up clothing drawer already;

Celeste also wanted in on the Disney Princess action; she went as Snow White, complete with a ridiculously huge hair bow I made myself;

and as for Aurora, she got her turn in our go-to baby Halloween costume; this lovely yellow duck get-up that quacks when you squeeze it! It was a little worn, and truth to tell Aurora didn't love the hood too much, but it mostly worked out. Random observation: doesn't Aurora have gorgeous blue eyes?

Since Halloween was on a Sunday this year, we decided to do our trick-or-treating on Saturday night. Luckily, we had many ward members work together on this, so the kids had places to go. We weren't originally going to hand out candy on Sunday night, but we had SO MUCH left over from all these activities that we gave in and decided to give it away. We ended up having lots of trick-or-treaters this year, so in the end, just about all the candy was given away! Our waistlines were relieved.

That about does it for the Barretts' 2010 Halloween. Is it my imagination, or does this holiday get more hectic every year? I love Halloween, but I am also relieved it's over & happy to move on to the more emotionally meaningful holidays this year (except that we'll be in Disneyland for one of them, so I'm not sure it counts as "emotionally meaningful" this year :) ). See you all next time!

Fall Fashion at Chez Barrett

It's been a season of birthday parties, potty training, and solid foods here at Chez Barrett, and we've got the pictures to prove it! READ ON to see some of the highlights of fashion from this fall:

Take the above picture, for example. Here's Aurora sporting a lovely puffy-sleeved flowered top, accented with a bright yellow bib w/purple trim--ooh, a bold choice indeed! However, eating solid foods while cutting 4 teeth in one month requires bold moves to stay relevant and fabulous.

Speaking of fabulous, how about this ensemble Celeste is rocking right here?? Oversized jingoistic USA sunglasses, flowered muumuu dress, jingling bead bracelet, topped off with a pink leopard-printed baton used as a walking stick? What does this outfit say, Celeste? Answer: "I'm GRANDMA." Exactly which Grandma she was emulating remained unclear...we'll leave it up to you the reader to guess.

A lot of exciting looks were on parade at Lorelai's birthday dinner. Lorelai wore this energetic striped playdress, and sported the Pollyanna look with her two braided pigtails. It helped keep the hair out of her face as she played with her new Barbie dolls!

Aurora's flowered onesie was not to be outdone, though...plus, the youngest Barrett decided to reveal her newest trick: she can stand up! These days, Aurora can pull herself up on just about anything, and she can even take steps while holding Mommy's hands. Here, in this picture, we see the tip of that mobility iceberg.

As for Lorelai, those cute pigtails would soon be a thing of the past...

...because she took her very first trip to the salon to get a big-girl haircut!!

Just look...she's so sophisticated! So mature! Words...words fail me. Lorelai liked it, too!

But she's not just pretty as a princess...Lorelai also has the heart of a WARRIOR. At a friend's birthday party, Lorelai found time to don her pink princess crown, kick off her shoes, and mercilessly SLAY the terrifying dragon-pinata that crashed the event. There was much rejoicing thereafter. (thanks, Kristen & Deidre for the picture!)

Celeste's favorite look this season was "flowered hats & sticky fingers while outdoors." She demonstrates the versatility of this look by messily devouring a hot dog at Apple Annie's...

...and by demonstrating it again, this time with a lollipop, at Buckelew Farms (more on that later)! How can one girl be so sticky sweet everywhere she goes??

But the Barrett girls also have adventurous spirits to match their fabulous duds. Like this lovely play-tent, for example! Lorelai and Celeste had been clamoring to spend the night outside in their tent for months, so we finally gave in...on the coldest night of the fall to that point! They still had a good time, even though they picked up some not-so-fashionable souvenirs of their adventure: lots of tiny bug bites (luckily, they cleared up soon).

And finally, some more birthday-party haute couture--this time, from a kindergarten birthday bash Lorelai, Aurora, and I attended at Pump It Up, in north Tucson:

Frilly dresses & hair bows won't do for a jumping castle party: Lorelai wisely decided on this low-maintenance combination of jeans & green T-shirt. Let's see this ensemble in action!

HINT: if you replay this video over & over about 25 times, you'll get a general idea of what Lorelai's time in Pump It Up was spent doing.

Aurora also got involved in the proceedings, by debuting her Halloween onesie. Take a look!

With a hot pink flair, a coquettish black cat emblem, and warm yet versatile striped sleeves, Aurora is deckedout in a daring, exciting holiday surprise. And just look at the mobility it allows her!

As you can see, the boys couldn't stay away from Aurora. Just imagine how many heads these three Barrett fashionistas will turn in the next several years!

Just wait until you see our winter lineup! Stay tuned...

Aurora's Growing Up!

Before I post our Halloween pictures, I wanted to show some highlights from our littlest girl's life. Aurora is one big, healthy baby, and she is growing and learning fast! Throughout the summer & fall, she's hit many major milestones--and since I'm discovering the joys of video recording, I have a few preserved for posterity, like this one:

Yay, she can sit up! (and smile, and flap her arms around, but mainly with the sitting up...)

About 2-3 weeks after this (early September), she learned to crawl--first, by doing something I call "flumphing" (getting up on all fours, rocking back & forth to gain momentum, then flinging herself forward, then repeating it over & over again until she gets somewhere). Here's a clip of Aurora "flumphing" AND crawling--she moved on to crawling pretty quickly!

Some other highlights: Aurora has started taking baths with her sisters now; she loves them!

Even more importantly, she can now "pull up" on just about anything: couches, chairs, Mommy's legs, and pianos (both real and the noisy toy variety):

As you can probably see in this picture, Aurora's teeth have started to come in, too...the first one came on Sept. 1 (after many tearful days), and 3 more have (slowly) emerged since then. It has made eating and chewing a lot more fun (not to mention prodcutive) for Aurora.

But it gets better: two nights ago, Aurora actually took a couple of steps by herself!

At this rate, she'll be our earliest walker (she's almost 10 months; Lorelai started walking at about 11 1/2 months, Celeste at 13 months).

On many occasions this year, I have been a very flustered, frazzled mama, wondering what I got myself into by having 3 kids. However, watching Aurora grow, change and become happier each day answers that question for me. I am not sure what I did to deserve three such beautiful, sweet girls--but I'm grateful for them all the same.

Apples & Peaches & Pears, Oh My!

In early September, we gathered a bunch of boxes, piled the kids in the car, and drove an hour and a half east to Willcox, Arizona, for our (sort of) annual trip to Apple Annie's Orchard/Produce Garden.

It was the low prices for bulk produce that initially got me interested in Apple Annie's; thanks to them, I got started on my current home-canning habit. More than that, though, I absolutely love picking my own produce--there's something very satisfying about getting your food straight from the source. It must be the farming/gardening genes handed down to me from my father & grandfather. It's also educational (and fun) for the kids; we enjoy showing them where food comes from, and how it travels from the earth to the table.

Our first stop (as usual) was the produce garden, a few miles up the road from the orchard. Dark clouds gathered overhead, but it never rained--it was almost too bad, because it was a pretty hot day! Oh, well--we still enjoyed ourselves. Usually, I pick the peppers/tomatoes/etc. for my salsa at the produce garden, but since I canned my salsa earlier this year, we just decided to let the girls choose what they wanted to pick:

Here's Lorelai with one of our buckets (you pick these up at the garden entrance; if you're picking a LOT of food, they've got wheelbarrows too).

Celeste really enjoyed this part of the day...we got fresh green beans, chile peppers, a cucumber or two, and some summer squash.

After checking out at the produce garden, we drove back up the road toward the orchard--the larger & more developed portion of Apple Annie's:

Apple Annie's has over 10 different varieties of apple trees growing in their orchard, as well as peaches & several varieties of pears. Usually they had just grown Asian pears, but they finally have trees that grow Bartlett pears as well. Off to pick the fruit!

Yes, that IS a smile on Aurora's face. She really enjoyed the baby backpack!

Look at the beautiful peaches in those trees! Unfortunately, those particular trees were off-limits that day (as you can see by the string marking off the row). Nevertheless, we were still able to find enough peaches to satisfy us (but not a lot; they were pretty picked over by the time we arrived).

One of the tools Apple Annie's gives you is this neat "claw" that can reach up to the tops of the trees & yank out high-hanging fruit--which then falls into the small basket below the claw. We were able to get a lot of apples this way...

Lorelai was a big help getting the peaches & pears. Here she is sitting next to our fruit buckets. The pears in particular (on the right) were DELICIOUS. I already love Bartlett pears, but wow...these were super-sweet and amazingly good. I will definitely get these next time!

We also bought lunch while at Apple Annie's...some pretty delicious apple-wood-smoked hamburgers. Tasty...

...but not as tasty as dessert: apple-cherry pie with a MASSIVE scoop of ice cream on top:

Mmmm...it makes my arteries thicken just looking at it, but it was worth every bite.

That night, after returning home, I was feeling ambitious, so I whipped up an impromptu dinner with some of our fresh-picked produce:

Sliced peaches & cucumbers, along with a cheesy squash/zucchini casserole. Delicious!

We were pretty pooped out after a hot day picking fruits & vegetables, but we were still very satisfied with the results. We may wait another year or so before returning to Apple Annie's (we're thinking of letting our kids get a bit bigger first), but we'll still be excited to come back. It was very satisfying to live off the land...even if only for one day! (And even if it's not technically our land, haha!). Thanks, Apple Annie's!