Halloween 2011

The way Halloween works in this area of PA is that there is a set day for Trick or Treating, and it's not always on Halloween night.

For example in my friend Lisa's neighborhood it's on the Thurs before. 

Ours in the Fri before.

Jess's is Halloween night.

Basically if my schedule allows we can hit up 3 nights of trick or treating a year! Woo hoo!!!

In fact, Aidan's first time trick or treating ever was with Lisa's girls in their neighborhood:

Flashback to my little Mouse Aidan! (even Allie & Emma look so little here!) 2009

This year I had to drive to Philly to pick Ryan up at the airport Thurs night so we weren't able to see the girls and go around with them.

So instead we invited some friends to our house Fri night for Pizza and trick or treating in our neighborhood. 

We ended up with Austen, Kenzie, and Zack coming along with us, so including all parents we had a decent group going around the block.

Dude! I scored a lollipop! Do you think my mom will let me keep it?

NOPE.

 The Things

My favorite story from the night is that there was a house with a guy sitting out front with a bowl of candy and he was wearing a very large scary pumpkin head thing. Aidan got up to him and said "hi pumpkin"...then got his candy and said "thank you pumpkin". As he was walking away, he turned to the pumpkin man, pointed at him and said "you don't scare me!"

I think he was just trying to convince himself of that haha.

To top off Halloween weekend, we get to do our actual halloween night trick or treating in Jess's neighborhood tomorrow night. I think we'll still be eating all this Halloween candy at Christmas!!

Finally, some real(ish) food!

So as Mason will be turning 4 months old next week I decided to start him on cereal this week.

Surprisingly he did great. He was pretty decent at opening his mouth for the food and keeping most of it in his mouth when he swallowed.

Aidan came over and asked if he could help feed him, so I thought "why not?"

Ry grabbed the camera to document as I laughed hysterically with Aidan on my lap.

Oddly enough they both managed to survive, and Aidan only gagged him a few times with the spoon haha.

We remembered the transition to rice cereal being a little more traumatic with Aidan because at Aidan's 2 month visit we saw a "fill-in" pediatrician who told us Aidan had reached the max allowance of formula for a baby in a  day and said we should start him on cereal (mind you he was only 9/10 weeks old at this point). So in looking back at both boys reactions to starting solid foods I can see that Aidan was just NOT ready for it. He would scream and fight us so bad when we would try to give it to him. Mason just took that spoon like he was an old pro!

And so the fun of the baby food journey begins.....

Pumpkin Patch

As per our annual tradition, we took the boys to Grim's to pick our pumpkins again this year. Since Ryan just happened to have a Monday off we went around lunch time and we had the entire place to ourselves. There wasn't another pumpkin picker in sight!!

Aidan loved riding in the wagon and running around the patch looking at all the different pumpkins. He even tried to convince us to get a green one, haha! There was also a kid's hay maze, a small petting zoo, and a giant hay castle that had a slide on it.

We ended up with 2 pumpkins, and some apple cider (our favorite!!) and then headed home to place them out front until we're ready to carve one (Daddy's job) and paint the other (Aidan's job.)

I carried Mason strapped to my chest with the Baby Bjorn, but took him out for a few photo ops, which he cooperated very graciously for...even if I couldn't get Aidan to come sit next to him in the pumpkins... party pooper.

Gardening buddy

Last year when Michele told me she had planted one of her Mums in her flower bed I vowed to do the same this year. Michele's pretty Mum blooms each fall and I figure why not give it a whirl in my own flower bed with one of the gorgeous plants I got a few weeks ago.

I recruited Aidan to be my digging assistant, and he was thrilled to help "dig" in which he just played with the dirt, but he was even more excited when I found not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 worms for him to play with. Yeah I'm a cool mom.

But of course I started placing them all on the pumpkins on the sidewalk and they eventually inched off back in to the dirt when we weren't looking.

Mason hung out with us too, very contentedly enjoying the sunny but cool day, and Daddy even joined us to hang our orange halloween lights and giant spiderweb on the garage.

Picking apples with Poppy

My in-laws have an apple tree in their backyard which managed to keep Aidan occupied for hours.

He helped Poppy pick up all the apples that had fallen to the ground, and he even got some help picking one straight off the tree!!

he finally got it!!

He was running to me yelling "I got it Mommy! I got it!!"

Enjoying the "fruits of his labor" haha

Fall in NY

This past weekend we had the pleasure of taking a trip home to central NY for Ryan's brother's wedding.

This was one hell of a wedding. For starters, it was a gay wedding, which has recently become legal in NY state. Secondly my brother in law knows how to throw a party, and that he did.

Everything about it was beautiful, from the venue right down to the seating chart.

And I think everyone cried when they said their vows.

At the end of the night I overheard a guest say "Wow, there was a lot of dancing tonight. Straight people just don't dance." Hahaha, awesome.

The boys and I also had the pleasure of heading to Fly Creek Cider Mill with Stacy and Carter, which was so much fun. The drive was so colorful and beautiful, and the cider mill is in the most beautiful location ever.

Carter is such a complete frickin cutie!!!!