Some Halloween Fun

So this is what we've been doing since Halloween is right around the corner...

1. Elephant Pumpkin Bash--I've been wanting to go to this thing for years and I never remember to mark it on my calendar...but this year I got my act together and we finally went to see the elephants bash their pumpkins!  It wasn't all that exciting, but a lot of people come out for it....A LOT.  The zookeepers stuff the jack-o-lanterns with yummy treats for the elephants and the elephants love it.  I imagined the elephants just bashing one pumpkin after another, but it didn't happen that way in real life.  They slowly examined pumpkins and slowly smashed them with their feet...slowly...oh, so slowly.  But it was neat to see for once!

2. Bootanica--We went to Bootanica at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens last weekend and it was tons of fun!  We didn't even do all the activities because we spent a lot of our time at the visiting exhibit, Amazing Butterflies.  This interactive exhibit is all about caterpillars and butterflies.  We learned a lot (did you know some flowers change colors depending on the amount of nectar left inside of them??) and the kids had a blast playing with everything.  There was a spider web climb, caterpillar crawl (where the kids had to work together to crawl as one caterpillar), climb-in pupa pods...really cool stuff.

 A's mom said that B definitely had the best chrysalis face!  What do you think?

Here are the kids trying to walk like a caterpillar.  They aren't quite there...and I know that Eli isn't helping much either.

And here is that cool final butterfly zipline ride...

Besides that the kids also made gak, made a crown/sunglasses, and did some corn printing.

They also had this little obstacle course that Eli wanted to do a million times. It was so cute to watch him do jumping jacks!

3. Crafts--We've been doing some fun Halloween crafts.  A few faves are the handprint "boo" pictures--

(Evie's isn't quite there yet though...)

and the dry-erase jack-o-lantern--

4. Food--We've also been eating some Halloween food.  We made some easy Halloween s'mores the other night with Nutella (yum!) and marshmallow cream.  Honestly, the only thing that makes this treat Halloween-y is the fact that we sprinkled the sides of the marshmallow with purple and black sprinkles!  But who doesn't love eating s'mores anyway?  And you can tell from Evie's face that she loved her first taste of Nutella!

We've also had monster pudding cups (although Elina wanted to paint a cat on hers) and some mummy hot dogs.

Lots of fun lately!  We'll have more to report later...Halloween parades, trick-or-treating, pumpkin carving...does the fun ever end??