Halloween 2011

Addie decided about a month ago that she wanted to be a butterfly for Halloween.  She and I had a fun time finding the pieces to her costume and even doing a little costume creating ourselves!  And thanks to Grandma Dayna, Max dressed up as a zebra!  

The kids got a lot of use out of their costumes since Halloween turned into a 3-day celebration this year!  It started on Saturday night with our 4^th annual Friends’ Halloween Party.  Max had a fun time playing with some “big boy” toys (I think a truck or tractor may be in order for Christmas!) and Addie had a blast making finger puppets, digging through pumpkin guts for prizes and playing hide-and-go-seek. 

Addie, Max, Mason, Henry, Cooper, Ava, Liam, and Jack!

Then on Sunday we went to the Zoo Boo at Como Zoo.  One of my coworkers gave us tickets to this great event, and I expect that we will make this an annual outing for our family.  Addie had fun running around and looking at all the character boards and costumes while Max just sat back and took it all in.  I think the highlight of the evening for the little girl in me, was riding on the carousel!  Every time we go there it seems like it isn’t open so we were quick to take a ride when we saw it was up and running.

Finally Halloween arrived!  We had our friends, Angela, Nick, Hazel, Debbie, Jake, and Helene, over for dinner and then headed out as a group for some trick-or-treating.  Addie was so excited and sprinted from house to house.  She even braved the “scary” house down the street with excitement.  It was so much fun watching her run around the neighborhood with our friends and neighbors with pure exhilaration.  This was definitely the highlight of the weekend for us as well!

Max's First Halloween!

Addie, Hazel, Max, and Helene

7 Months Old!

Our little guy isn't seeming so little anymore!  I can't believe how fast he is growing and how big he is getting!  Max is now sitting up on his own and is officially crawling!  We knew he was getting close to being mobile, but are still quickly trying to baby-proof our house once again.  Another new "skill" is that Max is starting to sign!  We started noticing him signing "milk" this weekend... it's so cute, he takes his fist and turns it left and right and just lights up when we recognize what he is asking for.   No stats until the 9 month check up, but our growing boy is eating and loving all the new foods he tries... keeping up with him is the hard part!

Pumpkin Patch

Today we took our annual trip out to the pumpkin patch at Pine Tree Apple Orchard.  Addie was determined to find the biggest pumpkin, but we were able to get her to agree to the “great pumpkin” instead.  She was also determined to pull the wagon full of pumpkins back from the field.  This is going along with the theme we are noticing in our 3.5 year old right now… doing it myself (this includes getting dressed, doing zippers and buttons, and even carrying in all the things from the car).

 Once we picked out our pumpkins, we all had a fun time running through the fields, playing by the lake, and of course eating apple donuts. 

Fall Fun!

 I don’t know if it was the rain or hot weather, but Addie spent her entire summer asking when it would be fall.  Being a lover of all things summer, I had to ask her why she was so anxious for fall to arrive, and her answer was always the same, “fall is my favorite because I get to jump in the leaves!”  So as soon as we could, we starting raking up every last leaf in the yard so Addie could jump in the piles.  She had a blast, and even turned her slide into a leaf-slide!  And of course, I couldn’t help myself, and had to get out my camera and Max to take some pictures of the two of them.  Max also had fun playing in the leaves, but I think his favorite part was eating them! 

 

Dance Class II

Addie started dance class in September and loves it! One of the rules at dance class is that parents are not allowed to watch... except for at the recitals and at Parent Night! So last night we watched Addie's dance class and had so much fun! She did a great job following the teachers' directions, doing the steps and following along to catch up if she missed something. We also saw again how outgoing Addie is as she was the first one to offer up answers to questions and shouted them loud enough for everyone to hear! Even the 50 or so adults in the room didn't make her shy in the least! I wasn't as prepared as I had hoped with an empty SIM card, but was still able to catch some footage of both her tap and ballet dance:

The Crew

Addie, Hazel, Helene and Max – this is the daycare crew.  I took a picture of them the other day for a scrapbook for a friend and former coworker.  The story behind the photo is that Brian and I met Angela and Nick (Hazel’s parents) and Debbie and Jake (Helene’s parents) while I was an AmeriCorps member at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity.  I think it’s pretty amazing that we did not simply make amazing friends through this experience, but also there is now a group of us that all live in the same neighborhood and even send our kids to the same daycare!  Brian and I feel so blessed to have this network around us, because as we all know, it takes a village to raise a child!

Apple Picking

For the second year in a row, we were invited to Brian's coworker's house to pick apples. She lives in Medina and through the years has grown an apple orchard on the back of her property with about 150 trees! We had so much fun there last year so were very excited to be invited back again. We picked three different kinds of apples and taste tested many more... even Max got in on the tasting! Although once he got his first apple, there was no way he was going to give that up! After we picked our apples we got to make apple juice! Addie was very excited about this and could hardly wait for it to be her turn to throw in the apples and turn the wheel. The juice is delicious - better than any other kind of apple juice I have tried. This is something we all look forward to in the fall and hope that we will be able to be invited back to keep this tradition!