Happy Halloween!,

Today was fun!  The festivities started with Hudson's Fall party!  I kinda coordianted the party and I think the kids had a lot of fun!  SO thankful for everyone who chipped in to make it great for the kids! The party was set up like a little mini carnival. There were 5 stations:  Bingo, craft, pumpkin bowling, spooky spider snack, and pin the nose on the jack o lantern.

THEN after school we dressed up for some Trick or Treating!  If you remember from last year, Lawson promised Hudson that she would be a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader to go with Hudson's Tony Romo...because he agreed to be Pappa Smurf for her to go with her Smurfette costome last year.  And she followed through.  She was actually quite excited about it...mostly because of her white boots I think!

It actually worked good that we moved to Little Rock.  Their costumes were pretty novel here.  They would have been much more common if we were still in the metroplex!

An

This is an attempt at a picture of them hugging!  Hudson isn't into that much these days.  :(

We trick or treated in this neighborhood close to our apartment!  It was crazy!  Robbie and I bet there were at least 500 people out in that neighborhood.  There were people with 4 wheelers pulling trailers full of kiddos...like little mini hayrides.  It was crisp and cool...perfect evening!  Lots of fun!

 

 

Pumpkin Carving

The kids grabbed a quick bath after dinner and we spent the evening carving our pumpkins.  This has become another family tradition!

The kids always have fun exploring the inside of the pumpkin.  This year they actually cleaned the insides out pretty much by theirselves.  Which is good...because the inside of the pumpkin kind of freaks me out!

We roasted some pumpkin seeds.  Hudson had heard some people at school talk about roasting and eating pumpkin seeds.  He could hardly wait for them to come out! 

They smelled and tasted good!

Not sure how I feel about our final prodcut!  The kids designed their own pumpkins this year...and Robbie transferred them to the pumpkin.  Hudson wanted one that looked "scary" and Lawson wanted one with "braces".  I guess that's what they look like..but they are a little freaky.  I like happy pumpkins!

Big Time at the Arkansas State Fair

We started out our evening working at the Arora booth. ( Rob's mom works for Arora).  The kids had a blast handing out the trinkets to people passing by.  I'm pretty sure that they would have been content just doing this for most of the evening.  I knew that the clock was ticking and kept trying to talk them into heading out the rides...but they were just pretty happy working for Arora.

 

 

We finally pulled them away from their trinket duty, and made our way out to the midway.  I asked them to pose for a pic...and this is what I got.

Take Two! Needless to say, we had to set some boundaries for proper picture posing! 

Love that our first stop was the carousel!  It IS pretty awesome! Tried and true!

 

And then to the Ferris Wheel!

A new one for us this year...the bumper cars.  The kids were tall enough to do a few new rides this year.  And this is the first year we really didn't ride any "baby" rides. 

Then the swings! Good thing their cousin Morgan was there...because Rob and I are out on that one! What is it with aging that rides begin to make one naseous.  I used to could ride anything.  Now, there isn't much that doesn't make me feel sick.  I thought I could do these swings last year...regretted it about 20 seconds in to the ride!

 

They are ALL holding hands in line!  And Hudson looks so poignant!  Looks like he is practicing to be a statue!

Gettin to the serious thrills now!

Ready, set, go!

The good ole' scrambler! 

 And it's a shame....that all good things must come to an end.  We had a blast!  The weather was perfectly fall.Lawson and Hudson I hope you remember our yearly fair trip...the lights, the smells, the funnel cake, the fun!

 AND on a side note...we made the Arkansas State Fair Commercial! This is a photo that aired on the commercial. Look at my BABIES! It is about 6 years old! We had NO idea that we were even photographed! We showed the commercial to the kids...Hudson said "NOW we are famous!" Well...almost!

Learning about Cotton

 Robbie has family that live in Winchester, AR.  They are real life farmers!  I know that sounds dumb to say out loud....but they are the first people who earn their living solely from farming that I have ever met.  They grown corn, bean, and cotton for their livelihood!  That may not sound impressive...but WOW!  What I witnessed today was really cool! The amount of crop they grow, the machinery and the way technology has revolutionized farming is just so amazing!  Such a neat way to teach the kids about how we get cotton...something that we don't think about around our house too often anyway! Thank you Paul and Rachelle for this taking time to answer our questions and thank you Nonie and Poppa for taking to Winchester.

 Amazing cotton fields as far as the eye could see!  The kids got to pick some and we talked about how long it would take to pick this cotton field by hand.  Can you imagine that people really did that?  I know it sounds foolish for me to say that previous statment too...but considering how pokey and dense those bushes were....it must have been grueling and neverending work! Hard to believe people really did that for cotton!  Breaks my heart!  Hooray for cotton picking machines!

 

And then it was time to meet the cotton picking machine!  WOW!  We saw it last year packed in their garage...but had never seen it in action.   I said it then and I'll say it now!  It's as big as my house!  

We climed on board and got to ride it for several rows and watch the cotton be picked.  The view out the front window is pretty cool.  You can see our view in one of the pics below!  The glass goes all the way to the floor so it kinda looks like you are going to fall out!


If you look close, you can see Hudson sitting in Rob's lap in the picture below.

Fresh from the city ...but she still looks right at home on the farm doesn't she?! 

You can see the trailer filling up with cotton.  It fills up in about 3 rows.  It is all sophisticated.  Little dials show you what percent your trailer is full.  So you know when to stop and dump it.

Here is a close up of the spindles on the front of the machine that actually strip the cotton from the plants.

When the trailer gets full of cotton, it is dumped into another trailer truck and hauled off to the cotton module maker.  (Sound like I know what I'm talking about, don't I?)

Then that transport truck dumps it into the module maker.  Those cylinder looking things on top, move back and forth pressing down to compact the cotton.  (That's Lawson's head in the Polaris.  She is watching close!)

Once the module has been compacted and is full to the top, they drive they yellow frame forward and left behind in the cotton module!  Just need to tarp it now!

And there she is!

Lawson is giving us some perspective on how big a cotton module is. 

You can make approximately 28,000 t-shirts from one cotton module.

The kids each brought home some of the cotton they picked.  When we got home, I printed out these pics for each of the kids and made them little cotton books to take to school the next day.  They were excited to share what they learned with their friends.

I stuck this picture on there for the kids...it was one of the highlights of the day for them!  This dog followed us around the farm all day.  He would run as fast as our four wheelers could drive. We tried to lose him for the longest time and then just learned to love him.  Lawson took this pic.