Happy Halloween!

We have a tradition every year - and that is to cook Halloween dinner in a pumpkin!  My mom used to do this and it's such a fun tradition. We decided to have the dinner on the day before Halloween because usually Halloween night is crazy with excited kids getting ready and nobody wants to sit down to a family dinner.  The kids wanna get out and run for the candy!!  Here is how we made the dinner in a pumpkin:

  First, we started out with a healthy breakfast of Halloween chocolate chip muffins!  ha ha  Then, we cleaned out our pumpkin and toasted the seeds.  Yummy!

 Then, we put 1/2 cup water and 2 T. butter inside the pumpkin, covered the top with foil, and baked it for about 1 hour and 20 minutes at 350 degrees until the pumpkin was tender inside.

 This is what it looked liked after we baked it.  

 One year I tried to cook the stew INSIDE the pumpkin - that doesn't work!  You need to cook the stew in a crock pot, THEN transfer it into your pumpkin.  

As we serve the stew, we like to scrape off some pumpkin and serve it in the same bowl.  It is REALLY good.  Tom likes a lot of pumpkin (this is his bowl!)

 Sunday night, (before Merlin of course!) we carved our pumpkins.  It's so much fun to put on creepy music and gross out at the slimy seeds that come out of the pumpkin.  We call it the pumpkin GUTS!

 EEWWW!

I think they turned out really cute.  It's a little pumpkin family!

 Yesterday, after our crazy costume fiasco, I went and helped for 2 1/2 hours running between parties for Spencer's and Hailey's classrooms.  This is Spencer with his teacher Mr. Doutrich and his good friend, Tanner Day.

 I love the look on Spencer's face!

 Here is Hailey with her good friend, Avery Myers (I was a laurel advisor to her mom back in Portland, Oregon.  Crazy, huh!)

 This is Hailey with her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Silviera.  

 This is Hailey in the annual Book Character Parade (aka . Halloween Parade!)

 Kids would give them High Five's as they walked past their rooms.  It was so much fun!

At the end, the principal, Mr. Hallock, announced the scores from the AMES state testing.  Once again, our school received an "A" rating (one of only 5 schools out of 26 schools in the district).  Way to go Quartz Hill Students!