Pumpkin Carving Party

We had our first pumpkin carving party last fall and it was so much fun! Uncle Scott and Aunt Arla were here for the weekend and brought a bunch of pumpkins from Wisconsin with them. My always helpful children were ready and willing to help move all the pumpkins to the back yard, or rather were ready to be moved with the pumpkins to the backyard. lol :) 

 Jackson (2 years old)

 Kennedy (not quite 4 years old)

 Reagan (5 1/2 years old)

 Four of my favorite people in the world! :)

 Jackson and Grand-Dad playing with gourds - how sweet is this picture?

 Best friends, Uncle Scott and Missy K, making animal faces with sticks lol :) - love these sweet faces too! :)

 These too! :)

 Besides moving pumpkins everyone pitched in to make all sorts of candy goodies for our party

 We had to take a break from the party planning festivities to paint some finger and toenails with new polish Aunt Arla brought. Jackson wanted to be a part of that process as well but Aunt Arla made him give her some kisses as payment first. And kisses are pretty funny business!!! :)

 Time to get down to business!

 Another picture of four of my favorite people :)

 Aunt Arla brought this amazing pumpkin man with her all the way from Wisconsin to decorate our front porch.

 We had a great time getting ready for our party, but as you can see from the pictures below, the party was even more fun!

One of the many things dad's are good for - cleaning out pumpkin guts and carving specified designs on pumpkins!

 

 

Mom's are pretty good at helping out too!

   As you can see from several of these pictures the huge orange suckers from Grammy were an enormous hit! And look, there was actually at least one child who helped with cleaning out the pumpkin guts! Way to go Heidi!!! :) 

Yummy Caramel Apples!

 Travis and Maddie working (or at least pretending for my picture) to be hard at work on their pumpkins. :)

It's official, children make much better supervisors than workers lol :)



We also had small pumpkins to paint and keep little hands busy

How sweet is this smile???

Having fun on the swingset while the adults area busy working :)



Because we were planning to celebrate Missy K's b-day in New York instead of having a birthday party in Kentucky and she was requesting cake pops we decided to stick a candle in one of our pumpkin cake pops and have everyone sing happy birthday to her.



Here's most of our pumpkin carving crew (or beneficiaries of the pumpkin carving crew) with the finished products

Thanks to everyone for coming! We had a fabulous time and can't wait to carve pumpkins with you all again next year! :)

The Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique

We enjoyed the Disney Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique experience for the first time when we returned to the ship after our day at Castaway Cay. I hadn't been planning on doing this with the girls originally, but then I realized I wasn't sure when we would do a Disney vacation again and the girls were pretty much the perfect age for absolutely loving the full princess beauty treatment!

Reagan seeing herself for the first time as Princess Minnie

I thought this picture was so sweet, both Reagan admiring herself and Kennedy peaking out at her from the porthole in the background. :)

Missy K seeing herself for the first time as Princess Ariel

Missy K enjoyed admiring herself as well :)

 Again, I love the Disney Cruises for the truly personal experiences they provide. When we came to the Boutique to schedule our appointments as soon as the beauticians heard the girl's names they were very excited and asked "Are you the Reagan and Kennedy?" They told us the princesses had their hair done here and they had all be talking about them, especially Ariel. They had been waiting and hoping we would make appointments because they wanted to meet the girls too. They had to hear the girls do their Merida quotes and were just super sweet in general getting to know the girls, helping them select their dresses etc. During our appointment, later in the week, they discovered their favorite beautician had been a Girl Scout so they all had to recite the Girl Scout pledge together. So cute and sweet! :)

After our appointment, we met up with the boys who sweetly posed with the girls. Here are their highnesses Princess Reagan and Prince Rory

and their highnesses Princess Kennedy and Prince Riley

and my sweet princesses being driven by my wild little prince!

Missy K could not stay awake another moment at dinner! :)

After her dinner nap Missy K was ready to go and see her prince charming, Mickey Mouse, one last time :)

Two beautiful Minnie Mouses!  

Two beautiful Ariels in matching dresses (and matching princess pose too!)!

Three gorgeous princesses enjoying their last "special time" visit together

As always, Disney provided us with another incredible vacation and many magical memories! This time it was all the better becuase of the family that came along. Thank you to everyone who made this vacation one of our best and most memorable! 

This and That Around the Ship

Here are a few pictures I couldn't quite decide where to put, but wanted to include. This first one was the best family picture we captured on one of the formal nights

 This is a group shot leaving Port Canaveral

 Here are the kids dancing together (and I think with Goofy) in the Oceaneer's Club

 Andy's room in the Oceaneer's Club was super cool!

 This is one of my favortie pictures from the trip - I love that Stacy crawled in and thru Slinky! lol :)

 One wiped out little girl! In the middle of seeing a princess one evening Missy K laid down on the floor and declared she couldn't go one step further. lol :)

 These are a couple of creative and beautiful shots Grand-Dad took of the ship

 Such a sweet picture of the girls with Aunt Jen and Grammy

Thank you to everyone for all the fun throughout the week! :)