A Balanced Halloween Season

I think this year we've got the balance of Halloween/sugar/dress-up activities quite nicely balanced with fall/harvest/family fun activities. Finally!

We had a great time on Friday celebrating my dear dad's birthday with him. I don't think I've actually been with him for his birthday for about 20 years so this was extra fun. We did his birthday tradition of jumping in the leaves in the park right by our house (this has been a tradition all of us kids have honored wherever we've been throughout the world every October 28th - I've jumped in the leaves with orphans in Bulgaria, with roommates at Wellesley, with students when I used to teach, you name it).

We set off in search of great leaves

We raked them up

We buried Grandfather

We jumped over Grandfather

We threw leaves over and at Grandfather

We sure love that Grandfather

After leaf-jumping, we did cake and ice cream.

The kids all gave him the special cards and poems they made for him

Then we carved pumpkins with my parents and it brought back great memories of when all nine of us kids would carefully pick out and carve our pumpkins together growing up - only as a mom do I now realize how much work that was for my parents to oversee the choosing and carving of NINE pumpkins! It was awesome this year -all the kid are big enough to clean out, design and carve their own pumpkins with minimal adult help (love those little pumpkin saws that make the carving safe and easy). Hallelujah! My dad gave each pumpkin an award like he always did for us growing up - the most spikey (Oliver's),  the happiest (Silas's), the most original (Isaac's), the most mythologically-based (Ashton's cyclops pumpkin), the cutest (Eliza's).

Then Jared, my parents and I finished celebrating the big day with gorgeous sushi (Tona's on 25th in Ogden is our new favorite) and a wonderful concert - the King's Singers at Symphony Hall in SLC.

since we had our cake before dinner, we had this amazing avacado, tuna, crab creation for "dessert" for dinner

Saturday we went for a gorgeous hike up to a waterfall near here and collected amazing leaves. I'm LOVING fall. I've sort of skipped it for a lot of years living in places where seasons don't change so much.  As much as I LOVE New England in the fall, I've got to say the mountains of Utah can definitely hold their own as far as fall foliage goes.

We found our first spot of snow and had our first snowball fight of the season at the base of the waterfall!

Heading back down with the light turning golden

Then yesterday (Sunday) we went with friends to explore the Spiral Jetty - did a separate post on this one HERE.

Today, Halloween, we had delicious pumpkin pancakes for breakfast (I'll post the recipe later) and this afternoon we're having a neighborhood Halloween costume parade, our traditional black bean soup (again, recipe next post - very "Halloweeny" when you get that yummy black soup combined with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of orange cheese for all the Halloween colors - plus it's nice to get something healthy in the kids' tummies before they head out for candy), our church trunk-or-treat, a little neighborhood trick-or-treating and then we'll come back home to sort and trade all our candy and watch a somewhat scary movie.

In past years, it's seemed like we've had to get the kids dressed up like 10 times for different Halloween activities that started to feel pretty redundant. This year is much more mellow and much more focused on enjoying the beauty of fall - but we're still doing up Halloween right today. This is feeling good.