Halloween 2009

Happy Halloween to you all!

We hope you had a great weekend, as ours was very nice. While we filled it with quite a few "honey-do" errands, we did end up getting in a lot of fun activities as well. On Friday night we headed over to my Mom and Dennis' house for some great food and fun, and we even had an Aunt Colie sighting which was great. Landon really enjoyed exploring Grandma Dawn's house and reading books and playing games with everybody (although he's still not sure what to think about her little dogs yet). He even went through a whole sit-down dinner without a booster chair which was a fun milestone for all of us!

On Saturday we spent most of the day relaxing as a family, while working in a few chores and getting ready for Halloween night. Landon really enjoyed carving pumpkins with us, and while he didn't get to wield any sharp objects, he did master the art of the scoop, and spent a good chunk of time scooping out the guts of our huge pumpkin. And of course, being the little boy that he is, he couldn't help but wonder what pumpkin guts actually taste like...so yes, he did take a nice handful and cram them in his mouth. I will say that I don't think he hated it by any means, and while he didn't go back for more, he didn't make a face or immediately spit them out either. I would equate it to when he puts dirt in his mouth...not really his favorite food, but nothing that tastes horrible to him....go figure.

And here's the finished product of those long hours of pumpkin carving....Michaela and Landon did the Mickey Mouse design, I did the skeleton peeking out the window, and then here's an interesting design from the dogs...so the weird thing here, is that these pumpkins have been sitting in our backyard for weeks now, and I guess all it took was a little bit of pumpkin guts getting on the little one to cause Jack to say " you know what, I should carve one too"...although he elected to use his mouth instead of a knife...as you can see, his ears are back which means either "man, I shouldn't have done this and I know I'm going to get into trouble" or "wow, my carving job sucks compared to these other two!"...who knows...

As you can see by the pictures, Landon was a monkey this year...as we thought it fitting on so many levels...mainly he acts like a monkey, he loves bananas, he makes all kinds of strange noises all day long (including the ooh-ooh-aah-aah noise), and he's not afraid to poop anywhere...so it works. He really enjoyed wearing his costume, hated when we took it off, and asked to put it back on several times.

We took him out right when it first got dark, and decided to just cruise around the neighborhood to show him the pumpkins and some of the neighborhood kid's costumes. He ended up walking most of the time (which was great for us as we knew it would tire him out), and was completely fascinated by all the types of people we ran into. At one point we met some of our neighbors and their kids, and he was all about following the kids all over the place. He actually walked up to a house with the kids and came back with candy, which was quite the surprise to Michaela and I. We think Landon was a little surprised too, as he doesn't eat candy yet and didn't know what to do with it, so he just walked down and handed it to me. All things considered, we all had a great evening that was capped off by more trick or treaters than we have ever had before (unfortunately the little buggers wiped us out so we don't have any candy left for me to enjoy).

As for the coming week, it stands to be another busy one but we'll do our best to take some pictures and work in another post at some point.

I'll leave on this note. I was standing in the kitchen tonight, talking with Michaela and it randomly occurred to me that I cannot remember what our life was like before Landon. Sure, I can remember what it was like in college and everything, but the few months where we were married before Landon was born are completely blank to me right now. I'm not sure why it happened (although my memory is notoriously bad), but it just goes to show you how much things change when you have a child. It's a crazy ride most of the time, but one I wouldn't miss.

Have a good one!