Mountain Treats

I debated whether or not to put up a post about Halloween Candy, but then decided that it's not JUST about Halloween Candy, it's about Mountain Living and why we love living up here in these gorgeous New Mexico mountains that we fondly call our home.

You see, we sort of live in a neighborhood. There are six houses on our gravel road. We know everyone in each of those houses, first and last names. We also know at least 4 of our other neigbors that live on the outskirts of our neighborhood. We have met them while out hiking, walking llamas, dogs, and riding horses. Everyone is very nice and quite welcoming; always glad to see us. We all have between 3-10 acres and are located in a lovely valley surrounded by mountains, trees, ridgetops, and gorgeous sunrises and sunsets.

So, we have quite a bit to be grateful for.
Last year my kids and I chose to drive into Albuquerque to do our trick-or-treating, thinking we could just park in a neighborhood and walk from door-to-door while the kids could hit many more houses than they could do out here, where houses are separated by acres, not fences and walls.

The kids figured that they'd get alot more candy in the city, then here in our little mountain town. Boy! They were wrong.

Yes, we could visit more houses in the city, but we discovered that the pickings tend to be slimmer, usually just one or two pieces of candy per kids. And the candy variety usually leaned toward the icky side...lots of tootsie rolls, fire balls, necco wafers, hard candy, mary janes, and sweet tarts. Chocolate bars were rare.

We discovered last night, that Trick-or-Treating in our mountains means alot more generosity, in not only, amount, but type of candy given out. And the homeowners that greeted us were not only welcoming, but absolutely thrilled to have us come beg for candy. They didn't just drop one piece of candy into the kid's bags, they begged them to grab handfuls of goodies from their candy bowls. And if the kids didn't take, what they thought was enough, they grab some more candy to dump into my kids' bags. My kidlets were thrilled, to say the least.

Some of the folks even gave out baggies stuffed full of fun goodies such as toys, mini-coloring books, pencils and book markers, along with the candy. And there were several homes in the Halloween spirit who did entire haunted trails with music, lights, fog and spooky dioramas. And at one house, we were even invited in to their festive and friendly Halloween party. What fun!

My kids weren't able to run from house to house, like the city kids do, but they got really good at hopping out of my van and scooting through any Halloween decorated open gates and trotting up those long twisting driveways to the waiting candy-givers.

While we were out we noticed several mountain neighborhoods utilizing hay wagons to cart kids and families around to trick-or-treat. What a brilliant idea, I thought. And it was fun to wave and wish everyone a Happy Halloween as we drove by them.

By the end of the night we visited less than 20 houses. But when we dumped all the candy the kids had gathered, onto the kitchen table, we were all pretty darned amazed at how much was there.

Do you wanna see our Halloween Loot?
Not too bad for trick-or-treating in the rural mountains, eh?

We hope everyone had a safe, and wonderfully fun Halloween!!

Carving and Clucking

What do you do on a beautiful Fall day? Carve pumpkins!The chickens sort of get in the way, but Jax didn't mind. And the chickens did a pretty good job at clean-up.I borrowed this camera and it's unbelieveably slow in taking photos, so it was hard to capture just what I wanted. The pixels are bare minimum, too, so the photos look kind of grainy. I sure miss my camera, but at least I'm able to capture these special moments of all three of my kidlets preparing for Halloween.This was the first year that both boys could carve their own pumpkins, or at least the first time I felt safe enough to let them. lol! Jenna decided that she never wants to scrape out the pumpkin guts every again, thank you. Ewww.Here's the finished Jack-0'-Lanterns. Jem's is on the right...the one with the Uni-Brow.Jen's toothless wonder is in the middle. And Jax lays claim to the double-chinned pumpkin at the right, who is badly in need of some dental work.
Happy Halloween Y'all!!

Trunk Or Treat H'Ween

On Halloween we were invited to spend the evening with our friends, in Albuquerque, at their church's "Trunk or Treat", which is, if you've never experienced one, about a hundred decorated vehicles lined up with treats and candy to hand out from the back of their trunks. (One of the best concepts ever created!)
The themes and decorations were lots of fun and many of the vehicles won awards and prizes for their creativity, themes and style.

We had a great time with our friends and the kids came home with amazingly stuffed full bags of candy and goodies. John and I enjoyed the Trunk or Treat because we didn't have to walk up and down streets while trying to keep track of the safety of our children on dark streets full of strangers. And we especially enjoyed visiting with our friend Elizabeth and her sons', Zach, Nate and Wes.

On another note, we did do a little bit of trick or treating in our new mountain neighborhood and we even had 2 car loads of costumed kids show up at our house when we got home. So, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that we really aren't in the complete boonies. hahaha!

Photo Op at the house before leaving. (Don't my boys look so grown up with their 'facial hair?!!" Yikes!)(Click on any of the pics for a larger view)

Cutie Patootie Jenna Bear!
Serious Knight and King poses.
All five boys hanging out together at the back of our friend's decorated van.

Amazing Maize Maze!

Kind of last minute I decided it would be fun to visit the Corn Maze in Corrales, so we invited our friends, Connor(10) and Caroline (6) to join us (Mom had to work at church), and planned to get there after 2pm, so we could avoid all the chaos of public school field trip groups walking in orderly straight lines through the corn.

We planned it perfectly and basically had the entire corn maze to ourselves to run helter skelter laughing and screaming joyfully trying to find all the check points and find a way out.

We totally had a blast together and were even able to find all of the check-points, too.

There was a 'sand-box' style corn play area. Funny how my kids don't show much interest in sand boxes, but they were thriled to play in the 'corn box'! hehe Jackson and Connor goofing around together.
All 5 kids 'popping' in the corn.
Starting out....."Children of the Corn".
Punching our cards with the specially shaped punches at one of the Check-points
CORN-erific Kids!
Of course we were excited to see some relatives of our llamas at the petting area. Alpacas are smaller than llamas and don't have those huge banana ears that llamas do, but they are in the same family of camelids that llamas, and also vicunas share.
Silly alpaca!
This guy reminded me of one of the muppets that always has his hair covering his eyes.
Oink!!
If there is a climbable tree in the area, expect to find my kids in it...and our friends, too! Conner is way at the top left side! And of course it was an apple tree, so they gathered up shirt-fuls of apples to share.
Sitting down with apples to munch on the hayride.
Great gathering of the kids. Bummer the sun was blinding them!
Interesting story behind this photo. The kids were running all over the hay wagon, having a great time balancing as the wagon bounced over the rough dirt road. The driver of the tractor turned around once to check on us and asked if we were ok and smiled at the kids having so much fun. He even took us around another corner of the field where the pumpkin patch was, just because the kids asked him for a longer ride.

It got me thinking about how public school field trips would have been so much different. All of the kids expected to march in a row, noone allowed to climb a tree or run around laughing happily. And definetely no running around or standing up in the hay wagon. They would have been yelled at if that would have happened, for sure.

Teachers would expect pandemonium to occur if they allowed the kids to have any freedom. And it probably would have, especially after the kids have been sitting at desks for hours, sitting in buses for an hour or more, and then controlled to walk single-line perfection all throughout the corn maze.

A little while later, the driver of the tractor turned around as he rounded the bend at the front of the corn maze and made a sitting motion to the kids. He showed them with hand motions that eyes might be watching and may not approve, and he didn't want to get in trouble. He never said a word, though. And all 5 of the kids with me sat down politely with huge grateful smiles on their faces.

These kinds of daily experiences just reconfirm our decision to educate our children in our home and a whole world environment.
Gosh, I'm so glad we homeschool our kids.
Playing together in the Corn Crib.

A few more pics from H'ween Party

Our friends Carissa and Tom took some fabulous photos from the Homeschool Halloween
Party at Laura's last week and I want to add them here in a separate post.
Carissa and I whooping it up!
And doing a little square dance "do si do'!
Laura's "Haunted Spud". All the kids (and some of the less scared adults) took a tour of the haunted spud. Many screams were heard from inside (followed by lots of laughter).
Pal Connor and Jackson dueling together
Jackson and friend Sharon's neice enjoying a chat on the teeter totter.
Jackson Knight
Handsome Knight Jackson
Sir Jeremiah Knight
Jenna loves basketball
Even though the bow/collar was bugging her she refused to take it off. She loves being a kitty cat.
The kids showing off their costumes
The parents chatting having a great time.
Friend Jenifer's daughter Katelyn

Halloween Fun

Jackson, Jeremiah and Jenna after designing and carving their pumpkins
Spooky Fun Jack-O-Lanterns!
Our house on Halloween Night. Our pumpkin lights were up on the porch along with the Jack-O-Lanterns. Our neighborhood went all out in decorating for Halloween. We had a blast trick-or-treating, seeing so many creative spooky decorations, and walking into ghoulish graveyards and haunted garages to get the treats!
Our friends Monica and Rolling joined us with their sons Ian, Christopher and Garry. We walked up and down about 4 streets in our neighborhood, until finally the kids said they were tired.....and their candy bags were too heavy to carry!
Jenna's pumpkin was overflowing with candy and the boys' bags must have weighed more than 5 lbs each! Some of our neighbors gave out full-size candy bars to the adults. Even the fire truck drove down the street giving away candy! We had so much fun trick and treating and running with our friends!
Jackson & Jeremiah were so thrilled that their good buddy Ian could join them on Halloween!
They didn't want the night to end!

Halloween Homeschool Party

Our Homeschool Co-op organized a Halloween party with a unique idea of having all the parents set up Halloween Houses along a corridor, or street, so that the kids could trick-or-treat safely. It was lots of fun. There was also yummy food, crafts to make, and games to play.
Our dear friend, Laura, with Darth Vader (Jackson) and a Storm Trooper (Jeremiah)
Jeremiah in front of our Halloween house, ~aka~ tent.
Jenna Jaguar with our friends, Stacey and her daughter, Jade.
Laura's Halloween house, ~aka~ camper. That's friend, Madison enjoying the decorations.
Jenna Jaguar
GROWL!
Our good friend, Monica and her son, Ian (on left)
A Witch! No, just Dara and her Halloween House, ~aka~tent.
Another wonderful Homeschool co-op friend, Carissa and her daughter, Jazzie, in front of their Halloween House, ~aka~ Teepee.
A creepy clown, a wench, and a geisha! No, just some Homeschool co-op pals.
Our buddy, Sorscha (Neopet"Werelupe"), who always races up to give hugs whenever she sees us.
Laura set up some Dry Ice to use as an experiment to learn about the properties of dry ice and how it affects things around it.
The kids are blowing bubbles to see if the bubbles can get cold enough from the dry ice, so that they will freeze and crack.