Keeping Busy, Keeping it Together

These are the weeks when I'm grateful for the military wife training I have. Tomorrow marks the end of our second set of block exams for Jake. That means that we pretty much only see him for scripture study in the morning, sometimes 30 minutes for lunch (except for Caleb who's at school) and dinner. When he's home, he's here, but not here. Here's actually here. But don't get me wrong. He's doing an awesome job, and frankly I don't think that I could keep up with the amount of studying involved in all this. I know that it is killing him to have to miss out on all the fun. Halloween also happens to be our favorite holiday (aside from Christmas). I know he'd rather be with us than his books, but it is what it is.

So, in an effort to keep myself sane and the boys out of his hair - this month has been chock-full of Halloween fun - single parent style. I've mainly had to get used to just making plans without Jake. If I didn't, we would just be home moping around. Thankfully, however, between school, playgroup, things around town and our second annual holiday workshops, we've been able to enjoy ourselves despite the loss of our sweet patriarch.

Brendan's playgroup from church got everyone a sweet group deal at the local...um..."pumpkin patch".
This is how we do it, Vegas style. In the parking lot of a casino, baby!As part of the deal, the kids got to ride all of the carnival rides, including riding a little train around the lot, go into the petting zoo area, as well as get a little pumpkin. Brendan's favorite rides were the swing and the inflated super slide.Then Caleb's school had their trunk or treat. I've never seen a school do that before. There was a little haunted house, obstacle course and cake walk to raise money and then parents with their cars all decked out passed out candy to the kids. I decided to get into the spirit, too. After the reactions I got, it made me think about a second career working as a character at Disneyland. That would be so fun!

Each day has been something different for our workshops. We made what have become our traditional Halloween ginger cookies, and I tried doing some icing tricks this time. The boys liked it.
We tried our hands at making ghostly wind socks. Salt dough ghosts in the graveyard made a second appearance by popular demand (although I tried a new recipe that I like better), as well as spider pops to give away.
This evening with only one exam left (out of eight), Jake took some time to carve pumpkins with us. Caleb and Brendan were so thrilled. Brendan and I carved his little one from the pumpkin patch. Caleb designed our family pumpkin, and assisted Jake. The best part of all of it is that the kids are happy. I know how much they miss having their dad around to play with them, but we are trying to keep our minds busy - and so far it's working. Everyday, they come asking about the next workshop activity. I just keep hoping that I can keep it up. We're almost through the first half of the first year. One benchmark at a time.