I wanted to take a break from my Alaska posts and get our pumpkin patch trip on here.
We met Nana in Canton, TX to go to Yesterland Farms.  They have a nice set up, but it really disappoints me how these pumpkin patches charge you to get into the farm and then charge you for over half of the rides and attractions.  Just not cool in my book!

However, the kids had fun even though they felt a little too big for some of the activities and rides.

We watched a pig race, walked through a petting zoo area and watched this calf chomp on the arm of our kids.


These water pumps were fun.  You put a rubby ducky on the shoot and pump the water to make it go down into a little pool.








Reegan chose the roller coaster.  You'll notice a little girl wedged between us.  She was riding alone and wanted to ride with us.

I was excited when my friend, Kristi, invited us to go to a Kürbisfest (Pumpkinfest) in the town of Obermarkersdorf.

Let me start out by telling you a little bit about my friend, Kristi.  We actually met over a year ago, but not in the traditional sense.  We met as bloggers!  She's the first blogger I've met in person and we've become fast friends.
They have been living in Vienna for the last 4 years and her hubby is a trombonist for the Vienna Philharmonic.  How cool is that?!

Back to the Kurbisfest.  We took SO many pictures!  So I made a slide show.
Just to give you a little bit of background, if you so choose to look through the slides.  You will see pumpkin displays showcasing places around the world.  Some of them were really good.  Others were a bit cheesy.
We had SO much fun!  I look forward to going again next year!
Here are a few of my favorites from the day.

What a crazy few days we've had!!  Early in the Thanksgiving week I notified my kid's teachers that they would be out for Accion de Gracias (Thanksgiving).  Wednesday they had a field trip to a local theater.  I was excited for them to get to go.  What a fun way for them to finish up the week before their holiday.
Because of needing to do a bunch of cooking and cleaning I had arranged for the kids to eat lunch at school.  I had cleaned about half the house when I got a call, early afternoon, that Karis had a temperature and chills and they asked if I could come get her.

She had hardly eaten any lunch and one of the lunch break monitors was laying down in a room with her.  She did not look like she felt well at all, poor girl!  I got her all comfy on the couch watching a movie while I got back to cleaning before Brennan & Reegan got home.
That evening we were welcoming our dear colleague/friends from Prague, the James'.  They were here for the guys to do some work and to celebrate the holiday with us.

We had planned on joining thirty-something of our Madrid colleagues for Thanksgiving and figured we were going to have to change our plans, which we did.  Karis continued to have a fever and did for 3 days.   Thank the Lord and Lysol that no one else got it.  Seeing as Jerry practically used it as a cologne!  Ha!!  And now he's sick with his own thing, go figure!

We threw a very last minute feast together.  I was already in the process of making cornbread dressing and the good thing about living in another country on Thanksgiving is all the stores are open!!  The guys headed to the store and got some roasted chickens while us ladies got to work!  The only thing I really missed was having sweet potatoes. I've seen them, I just forgot them!  How could I when it's one of my favorites!!  Oh well.  We'll remedy that for Christmas!  Otherwise we had a nice little feast of chicken, dressing, green bean casserole, rolls and mock cranberry sauce.  What is our mock cranberry sauce you ask??  Why, lingonberry sauce from IKEA!  It's a great substitute!
We finished off the meal with pumpkin crumble, which was such a breeze to make last minute!  The rest of the day was just spent relaxing and catching up with old friends!

 By Saturday Karis was feeling better, but unfortunately the temperatures outside started to dip and no one was really up for braving the cold, plus our friends hadn't brought much in the way of cold weather gear.  So what did we do? Why headed to Starbucks, of course!!  The Starbucks in our town has some of those little kiddie rides that you pay a euro.  My kids have just as much fun climbing around on them without paying any money.  So, the kids played while the parents sipped away on their Starbucks drink of choice!

This was one of those weekends where I got to chatting away so much that the camera was just about forgotten.  I did get a few our last day together!


I took them to the airport this morning.  We were sad to see them go!  But, it's time to get back to life as normal!  Hope you all had a very blessed Thanksgiving!

We were surprised to learn a couple of months ago that Spain celebrates Halloween.  It's the first country in Europe that we've lived in that does.  I understand that it's not celebrated in all areas, but the bigger cities it is.
I know there are differing opinions on Halloween, but we decided to join in on the fun and our original thoughts was to use it as a way to get to know our neighbors.  I had the idea of having an open house and have cupcakes to decorate for the kids, but we have been sick for over 2 weeks now and we weren't able to do that.  Oh well.  Maybe next year.
Each apartment that was participating in "trick or trattle," as they say here, was to put something Halloween-ish on their door and it would begin at 7:30.
My kids could not wait!!
I really didn't want to buy new costumes, so to the dress up clothes we went.  My Spiderman, ballerina and Cinderella didn't seem bothered by that one bit!!
I got to thinking what I could do with the girls hair to make it pretty.  I am not very good at styling their hair.  I got online and found a fun site called Princess Hairstyles with lots of photos and some videos.  And some of the styles are really easy!  Reegan's hair is really thin, so hers didn't hold very well.  I had to redo it a couple of times, but we made it work.










They do thinks a bit more ghoulish than we're use to.  Mine were the only ones not dressed up like some scary thing or a witch.
November 1 is All Saints Day or Día de todos los Santos, so the kids don't have school tomorrow.  I guess that's a good thing since they may still be crashed after their sugar high of an evening!  Ha!

It took me a week to get these pictures off of Jerry's IPhone of the Fall festival we went to last weekend.  Sorry some are a bit grainy.
Even though we've all continued to be a bit under the weather we decided to go.  It was at a local Christian Academy.  We had a lot of fun!

and one of their most favorite things, jump in a bounce house!!  My kids are crazy for bounce houses.  I think they went and bounced 4 times!


We finished up the evening by watching "How to Train Your Dragon" on a big screen.  It was fun!