A Pirate's life for him

A store at the mall had a Halloween sing-a-long this morning. I thought, "hey won't that be fun. E love Halloween and he loves singing. This will be great!" Silly me. Of course the free event was strategically placed at the back of the store. I immediately knew the fate of our outing when the first display to our right was a pirate ship. No, I didn't get to sing-a-long to a single song. I watched E play with the pirate ship display, then the castle, then a truck and then a doll house before he grabbed yet a different boat and tried to open it. That's when I had a very dramatic exit pushing a stroller with a two year old under my arm kicking and screaming "Booooooooat!". That exclamation continued all the way home. I should have known better.

You know why I should have known better?... I live through these scenes all the time. Just to demonstrate why I should have just avoided the whole thing, here is a picture of E as excited as can be in one of his favorite places-- the gift shop you get dumped in right after the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

This is the "before" picture. After this we passed many, many, many bins of swords, hooks, and guns strategically placed along the exit path. We didn't need an "after" picture because the memory of E screaming "swoooooooooooooooord" for hours through the Magic Kingdom is forever engraved in my mind. It doesn't take a marketing genius to get my son to want to buy something.

Does two years in a row make it a tradition?

October's 5th big event was a trip to a pumpkin patch/fun farm. I think it is a classic way to officially welcome in Fall, plus E had been talking about pumpkins for weeks. We were there for a couple hours and had a lot of fun despite it being a little cold and very wet.

E wanted to spend most of the time feeding the animals in the petting barn. I guess the kid really really really likes goats.

Miss A just sat around patiently all bundled up to keep warm.

I was able to pull E away from the animals (temporarily) to go on a hay ride.

E rode the ponies. They were actually the same ponies he rode a couple months ago at the neighborhood party. He had the funniest face while he was doing it. It was sort of this "I really really like doing this but I'm not sure if as a big boy I should think it's cool so I'm going to try to hide my smile".

And of course we picked out a few pumpkins (you have to have at least a few pictures a year with your kid and pumpkins right?)

We also just hung out and enjoyed the surroundings. GOOD TIMES!

October's big events #1, 2, and 4 (I'll get to 3 later)

#1 The Tulsa Sugar Art show

The first weekend of the month my mom came up to go with me to the Tulsa Sugar Art Show and National Wedding Cake competition. The show is put on my Kerry Vincent (for those of you who watch the food network cake challenges she is the judge with the accent who always wears the braided headband thing). We actually met her but unfortunately the camera ran out of batteries right as I was snapping the picture of my mom with her. We enjoyed watching demos by three of the guys who have done the FN challenges. There was also a demo by Stanton Ho who was on the American gold medal winning pastry team. I was only able to sit through a fourth of the demos but I got a lot of it. We also walked around and looked at the cakes people submitted to the show and watched most of a timed cake competition. It inspired me to make a cake for the show next year. There's a kids division so maybe I'll work with E over the next year to teach him to make a cake to enter too.

#2 Miss A turned a third of a year old.

I want her to stay small but she wants to be big. She thinks her older brother is absolutely hilarious. She is super smiley (despite the fact that we can never capture that in a picture) and talkative and almost always wants to be standing when held (actually she's been that way for months). I'm pretty sure she is convinced she is on the verge of walking (although she's not) and I know she is really frustrated with the fact that she can't quite crawl. Why can't she just be content sitting and smiling like other babies? This one is going to keep me on my toes!

#4 Miss A had her first meal from a spoon.

She really liked it but was having a hard time grasping the idea that her tongue should stay in her mouth rather than stick out when there is food on it so we are holding off just a little while on making this a regular event.

I know, I know...

...it's been a month since my last post and it was kind of lame. Let me just say that October has been super busy with:

My goal is to get a few posts up within the week of the details surrounding these photos. Wish me luck.

A Fair Affair

First let me say that I am aware that my blog template is very boring. Something happened with my old one and I don't have time to fix it so I'll just have to deal with this for a while.

Now on to the real post topic--Friday we decided to check out the Oklahoma State Fair. We had a really good time. E really enjoyed the pig racing, sea lion show, frisbee dog show, horses, tractors, pretending to be a farmer, and eating fair food. In fact he loved it so much he asked to go back when we got in the car to go shopping today. Luckily he didn't throw too much of a fit when we ended up at the mall.

Productive Weekend

It's official... We have decorated... some. We've lived in this house for 4 and a half months and hadn't hung a single thing on the walls. Pathetic, I know. This weekend we tried to remedy that issue. There was a lot of bare wall so there are still quite a few more nails and hooks that need to be hammered in but we definitely put a dent in our decorating needs. Hopefully it won't take another 4 months to make more progress.

Those who know me know that I probably won't choose to have leopard print wall paper but after taking down wall paper in two smaller bathrooms I decided to find a way to make it cute. I found an idea to make these Styrofoam animals on Michael's website.

Miss A's room is almost completely finished. I can't really take credit for this one since I stole the design from Pottery Barn Kids.

This idea came from about a billion versions of it I found on creative people's blogs. Here's the pattern.

I used the extra material from the birds to make some butterflies

I got this pattern from Heather Bailey's site. The "A" was a gift from a friend here in OK.

I also finally got up some of the decor my sister helped me pick out when she was here way back at the beginning of July. Thanks for you help Jess. Sorry it took me so long to get it up.

After a long day or cleaning and hanging we had people over to watch football and eat Br's yummy burgers. During the game a friend and I planned our upcoming culinary group Halloween dinner party. I'm pretty sure you all know how much I love themed parties. I can barely contain my excitement.

I didn't have to wait until October to get the creative juices flowing. Br's office asked me to make a cake for a co worker's 50th birthday. Here it is:

The design was a request, but I have to admit that it wasn't too far out of my repertoire considering the septic cake I made my boss a couple years ago. By the way-- I apologize for having pictures of two toilets in this post.

A few more pics

Not that I didn't like the photos I posted of our family at my friend's wedding, but she recently posted some photos herself and they are much better. Here are a few:

Doesn't she look amazing? Thanks again for trusting me with your cake Pfister! Thank you for the pictures