Tuesday, November 10, 2015

9 Fall Traditions

When you have an exchange student living with you, you get excited to share with them all your Fall family traditions. (You also try not to yell at your kids as much)
So, besides the foliage and the pumpkin patch, I already posted about, here are some other must-do's of the season, according to our family.
1. Homemade donuts.
I am sure nothing could have been invented to mess up a kitchen quicker but they are oh so good and yes, worth the mess. It takes an assembly line to make these--one to cut out, one to fry, and another to glaze. These must be shared with neighbors.

2. Haunted Corn Maze
We didn't get there early enough to ride the redneck roller coaster but dark is when the corn maze turns haunted and we like a good scare. Finland and Norway came with us. We may have been few in number but you never would have known with the volume of screams from these girls.
3. Family Halloween Party
limbo, piƱata, cake-walk, pin the nose on the witch, donut contest, scary story, monster mash dance, riddles, soup and rolls...There was a LOT going on at the family party at the church...but the best was back at the house for the hayride through "Haunted Haskelville." Some of the uncles and older cousins go all out to make this a really fun tradition. I swear it gets better every year.  


4. Caramel apples 
5. Jumping (or burrowing) in the leaves.
That there is a pile of boy cake with leaf frosting.

6. Pumpkin carving
  J was proud of her first ever Jack-o lantern. B used a drill on hers. I look forward to the day when ALL the kids can carve their own pumpkins because my cut job didn't quite live up to the expectations of the 7-year old.

7. Turkey Trot--5k
We had 3 runners in the family, well 4, if you count me jogging alongside Bud to help him keep his pace. A and C ran the kids 1-mile run. BD did the 5k. He and A won our family a couple of turkeys!
It must feel good to win!

8. Pine-nuts
Roasting pine-nuts is more of a Christmas tradition but they are harvested in the Fall. Apparently pine nuts are abundant right up in the hills above town! We headed up there on Sunday, only we were a little late in the season. We found them alright. They do exist. But they were old and dried up and we got very pine gummy...

You'll notice a theme here with our traditions: MESSY, STICKY, GOOEY.

9. Trick-or Treating
We are down to 3 this year. They all went with friends which left BD and I to answer the door 150 times. You might think this one isn't messy but you'd be wrong. I have picked up at least 150 wrappers in our house since the night of the big loot. I think after the family inservice on how to load the dishwasher we'll do one about putting garbage in the GARBAGE CAN.

Oh well! It's Fall and we are loving it!