"happy halloween to you"

we asked grady what he was going to say when he went up to people's doors, trick-or treating. his response was "happy halloween to you! i have costume!". that just made me giggle. we prepped him a little after that :)

i unfortunately didn't even pull out the fall or halloween decorations this year :( it kind of stuck up on me. but, we did make it to the pumpkin patch, did some halloween-y art projects, made yummy cupcakes, and carved pumpkins. we got in some halloween festivities at great wolf lodge a week or so ago as well! (which reminds me, i need to get to posting the rest of the pictures from there).

anyway, here's to halloween, 2012!

trick-or-treat!

iPhone

grady wanted to pull drew. drew had to hang out in the wagon the majority of the time, since it was raining and he refused to keep his adorable monster hat on. really though, i don't blame him.

after the first few houses of having to have mom or dad come up to the door and ring the bell and say trick-or treat for him, grady did pretty darn good by himself :) he'd initially say trick-or-treat before anyone got to the door, and then look at them confused when they opened the door and were waiting for him to say something. haha. he learned pretty quickly though. and started running from door to door - "lets go get more can-y"! he'd say "trick-or-treat", "please and thank you", then as he walked away "happy halloween"! his costume was a hit and he got his bucket full of candy within 45 minutes! then he came back home and helped answer the door and hand out candy to all the other kids. 

drew was tired and didn't seem to care too much about the whole halloween business. but i have a feeling that will be much different next year. grady was pretty jealous drew was a monster, even though he picked out his firefighter outfit. he wanted everyone to be a monster - including mom, dad, kristin & tressia, lol. we will see what next year will bring!

drew's {almost} 18 month shoot

i've been wanting to get the boys out  to take some fall pictures, for quite some time now. the days go by and i just kept putting it off...the weather sucks, it's too cold, it's too wet, too busy, etc... well, the leaves are almost all off the trees now and i knew i didn't have much time (or decent weather) left to do it. so, we dropped grady off at preschool thursday morning, and it wasn't raining! i checked the forecast on my phone in the car on our way back home - rain for the  next 10 days-blah! so, on a whim, i decided to just go. we ran home to grab my camera and headed to the park. since grady couldn't be there, i decided to make this drew's 18 month photo shoot :) this is the first time i've tried an actual photo shoot of one of my boys. really, i had no idea i could take so many pictures in 30 minutes! 

we went to juanita bay park in kirkland,wa. this is where we had drew's 6 month photo session almost one year ago. it was the middle of november then, FREEZING cold, but the leaves and colors were gorgeous! i knew i wanted to go back there. even though we missed all the pretty leaves on the trees over the bridge (those were long gone), we found some other great areas, too.

we were there an hour or so... played in the leaves, ran through the field, ran up and down the bridge, looked for ducks & had some snacks. oh, and drew decided to snack on some unknown berry - which i thought initially was a leaf - but nope! i could have poisoned my child! :( mother of the year, right? but,  after some extensive, yet unsuccessful, internet research...then asking a few people, it turns out it was from a dogwood tree. not poisonous at all - thank goodness. 

drew was a great sport the whole time. it was kinda nice to have some alone time, with just one child. 

oh, and he LOVED the leaves... he could have kicked those around for hours.

the "leaf" 

the classic drew "sniffy" face 

kickin up the leaves

beautiful {starting to get} brown-eyed boy

you coming, mom?

oh, lambie - what will we ever do without you?