Halloween 2013

There is just something about seeing a holiday through a child's eyes...  As Ruby is getting older, it's getting better and better.  Our Halloween was SO much fun!

We kicked off the week by having Grandma over on Sunday to carve pumpkins.

The pumpkins we got from our trip to the patch were no joke!  It was quite the feat to get those guys gutted and carved out.

Then Monday was school.  The kids were encouraged to wear their costumes, and had lots of pumpkin-related activities (and no painting, so they'd stay clean!).

Exploring a sensory bin (she dumped that basket of sand on her head).

Stamping spider shapes into play doh.

Shakin' her thang with the pumpkin shakers at circle time.

Then we took all the kiddos outside for a group picture.

The candy corn is covering the face of a little guy whose parents don't want him on the internet (they were ok with covering up).

On Tuesday, we had our weekly volunteering gig, of course.  The classes were having their own little costume parties, and the instructors encouraged me to bring Ruby in her costume as well.  Didn't have to tell me twice!  Ruby was an adorable little kitty cat greeter, and she was super interested in checking out the newborns in costume!

It also happened to be National Cat Day (that's a thing?), so it turned out she was dressed appropriately.

Wednesday we laid low (though she did wear her glow in the dark onesie!).  Finally, it was Halloween.  Ruby put on her trick or treating dog shirt and festive striped leggings for one last time, and I plopped her pumpkin hat on her head, so that we could go out and run some errands (no surprise, I needed to buy yarn).

Ruby later requested to wear one of her Halloween bows.  We discovered that because the bow has candy corn all over it, she thinks the word for candy corn is "bow".  Dead.

I realized just in time that I should probably take her outside to get some pics of her in costume before it got dark.  I had just been planning to dress her for trick or treat.  What a mom-fail that would have been!!!

Seriously?  Cutest kitty EVER.

She was kissing her pumpkin...

Messy hair, don't care.

Kissing her rocks...  Weirdo.

She looks like she's about to pounce on those pumpkins!  Me-OW!

After all the photo-taking shenanigans, we went inside for a dinner of pumpkin and bat ravioli.  You know, to be festive.  

When it was dark, we had Ruby grab her pumpkin bag (an old gift card holder from Starbucks many years ago - the perfect trick or treat bag for a one year old!), and we went next door to our neighbor's house for her inaugural trick or treat.

Our neighbor, Tanner, answered the door and was excited to see Ruby.  I was pretty much dying from all the cuteness.  He offered her the candy bowl, and she was like, "heck, no, you are not my mom & dad!".  She was being super shy, so I took a piece out and showed her that it got to go in her bag.

Whoa whoa whoa.  I get to put candy in my bag, Mom???

Yeah, that's when her demeanor totally changed, and she was into the trick or treating!  She got to take another piece from the bowl, and did all on her own, putting it into her bag.  We heard Tanner's wife, Samantha, yell from upstairs, "Don't go!  I want to see Ruby's costume!!!"  So we hung around and chatted a bit.  The whole time, Ruby was saying, "Bag?  Bag?" and pointing to her candy.  It was freaking adorable, and my heart was exploding into a million pieces.

Their baby was dressed as a skeleton, which Ruby thought was pretty great, too.  But baby skeletons need to eat, so we said goodbye.  We decided to take Ruby to one other house - our neighbors across the street (who gave Ruby her red wagon).

It was a good call.  Our neighbor, Sandy, was so excited to see Ruby all dressed up.  And Ruby was pretty excited that people were offering her more candy!

We came home, and in the spirit of the holiday, we let Ruby eat one whole piece of candy, all to herself.  Ok, so it was one of those tiny square candy bars (Baby Ruth), but she basically thought she died and went to heaven.

I told her that kids were coming to our house for trick or treat, and when one finally did, she was SO excited!  I think she might have liked helping hand out the candy even more than trick or treating herself!  Unfortunately, because our front door faces only a sidewalk (no street, see the pics above with the rocks in the background), we get very few trick or treaters.  This year was an all time low - only 4 doorbell rings before we shut it down and put Ruby to bed (late).

My heart was so full from watching my little kitty girl on her first Halloween that she had any idea what was going on.  It's going to be hard to wait until next year to do it all again.  Thank goodness we have Christmas coming up (I've already ordered Ruby some festive leggings)!

Want more Halloween fun?  Check out how we spent it last year.  My baby was so tiny!

Pumpkin Fun!

Mr. G and I tend to be the biggest holiday procrastinators.  You know the type - shopping on Christmas Eve, getting a tree, like, a week before, and hitting the pumpkin patch the week before Halloween.

Not this year.

This year, Mr. G wanted to do both pumpkin patch AND corn maze.  There is an amazing corn maze about an hour from where we live.  We've always been at night (so fun!) pre-kid, but we figured it'd be pretty awesome in the daytime with our girl, too.  And the weather here is currently incredible, not at all like our usual wet Octobers!  We had to seize the opportunity.

And bonus?  They have a killer pumpkin patch on the same farm.  If you are local you MUST check out Bob's Corn & Pumpkin Farm.  Must!

This wasn't even half of it.

Ruby took kind of a crappy nap, and didn't sleep at all on the way there.  Which took forever, thanks to an accident on 405.  So she was in a really weird/out of it/grumpy mood when we arrived.  We parked, trucked it in past some farm animals (that she was interested in, but still way out of it), purchased our passes for the big maze, and while we waited for the tractor hayride to take us there, we discovered that the Snohomish County firefighters were there with some apparatus' for the kids to check out.

Mr. G was a firefighter back in the day, so you know we had to get our girl in that engine!

But she was still super weird and out of it!  It was bizzare.  Anyway, we decided to head over to the tractor pick-up area.  All around us were amazing smells of roasting sweet corn and cider donuts.  When Ruby saw the (enormous!) tractor, she perked up.  This tractor was so huge, she could've fit inside the wheel.  It might have been her favorite part.  It pulled two huge haywagons to take us across the street to the maze, so we hopped aboard.

Still a total grumpapotamus, but she thought the straw was really cool.  Once we arrived, you could either go to the pumpkin patch, or head into the 10 acre maze.  Yes, 10 acres.  That's where we went!  We thought Ruby would enjoy running through the corn stalks.  No.  She wanted to be carried.  But not really.  She just wanted to grump?  I was kind of worried.  We got into the maze, and promptly got lost.  In case you're wondering what we were dealing with, this is this year's maze:

via

For reference, both the start and the finish are in the upper right corner (start is the opening at the bottom of that notch), and the large square at the bottom left is the halfway point.  Oh, and the crop circles are areas for private firepit parties when you do the night maze (night maze is so awesome).

Anyway, we were lost, and we weren't even to the "BOB" part yet.  And Ruby was grumping.  We found a dead end, put her in the Beco, and decided to use the map (thank goodness we took a map, we almost didn't because we never have at night).  Except when you're lost, it's almost impossible to orient yourself with the map.  It wasn't until we stumbled into the O that we figured out where we were.  We figured it wise to use the map with a cranky baby, but even with it, it was SO challenging!  We got a little mixed up near the bee, but luckily I am pretty darn good with direction.

Thankfully, Ruby decided to fall asleep, and we all made it out alive a couple hours later.

We decided it was time to find the great pumpkin, so we headed out into the patch.  Ruby was still pretty grouchy (what the heck, kid??), but once she saw the pumpkins, she asked to get down.  It wasn't long before those big orange orbs turned her mood around.

Pumpkins everywhere!

She tried to lift some huge pumpkins, and got really annoyed that she couldn't just pick them all up.  Then she found the little one with the long curly stem, and it became her BFF.  She kept pointing to it, and saying, "Wow!!!".  It was super hard to walk out there over the dead vines (thank goodness it wasn't too muddy, since her rainboots arrived at our house while we were at the farm), so we decided to snag her little pumpkin and one of the cute white ones there, but head back across the road via tractor and get our big pumpkins by the barns, since we had all our stuff and they had another smaller patch over there.

We made a quick stop at the barn to see how our little lady measured up, and so that she could again show us how much she loved the curly-stemmed pumpkin, before walking over to the patch.

That face!

She was freaking hilarious, trying to pick up all of the (huge) pumpkins.  Mr. G decided to take the majority of our junk back to the car, so Ruby and I fooled around in the patch, taking tons of pictures of her cuteness.  It was awesome to see her so excited about the pumpkins (especially after all the grumpies earlier!).

She really liked these greenish ones.  I did too, I'm kinda sad I didn't take any home.

"This one, Mama."

Daddy came back and found us horsing around the barn again.  Ruby would point to a pumpkin, then point to herself, which is how she usually lets us know she wants something.  Haha!  At one point, she even kissed a pumpkin!

We grabbed a pumpkin wheelbarrow and loaded up our little pumpkin for a ride through the patch to the other side, where we found the perfect mama & daddy pumpkins.

Back up at the barn, we found a cute little Ruby-sized pumpkin, too.  Mr. G went in to pay, and Ruby and I watched kids swinging from a tire swing on a big old tree.  Seriously, how awesome is this place?  

After that, we had just enough time and energy to grab some hot apple cider donuts (my stomach just growled thinking about them).  Ruby took one bite and couldn't believe what was in her mouth.  After that, all we heard was, "Bite?  Bite?".  They were amazing.

We bumped along with our wheelbarrow way back out to the car (it was next to that black one driving in the picture above, oof), and loaded up for the trip home after what turned out to be an amazing day at the pumpkin patch.  I already can't wait to take Ruby next year, and I feel like this was a preview of just how awesome holidays are going to be with a toddler.

And, hey!  Since we weren't slackers this year, we still have time to take her to another pumpkin patch if we want.  I'd love to take her back to the one we went to last year!

Halloween 2012

I posted a little pic of Ruby on Halloween from my phone (dear Blogger, your app is terrible), but I have a LOT of pictures from our holiday festivities and I want to document them!  We didn't really do anything for Independence Day, so this was really the first holiday that we celebrated with our girl.

First, we had to make a trip to the pumpkin patch!  I brought the camera, only to find out that the memory card was full.  So I set about to delete enough pictures to make room... only for the battery to die!!!  Major mommy fail!  Thank goodness for iPhones.

We headed to Jubilee Farm, an awesome, non-commercialized place that even has it's own CSA.  I'd taken students on a field trip there, and knew it was the place to take Ruby.

Daddy found the perfect pumpkin and chopped it from the vine.

Our little family - look at those ominous clouds!

We rode in the hay wagon from the field to the barn.

Little Miss checked out her pumpkins.

Ate her skirt.

And gave us some attitude.

And I held my three pumpkins while Daddy loaded the car to go home.

Then, we had a little front porch photo shoot:

"I'm not sure about this, Mommy..."

Hahaha, outtake!

My absolute fave - it's the background of my phone right now.

"What?"

"Oooh, look at this!"

"Ok, I'm ready for a nap now."

At parent-baby class, we had a little Halloween party.  Which really just meant that we dressed the kids up and took pictures.  Because, well, they're 3-6 months old.  They aren't exactly party animals.  And luckily that was all it was, and they didn't take pics right away because it took us 70 minutes to get there.  Apparently everybody forgot that they live in Washington, and it rains here.  Um, hi, if you can't drive in the rain, you might be living in the wrong state.  Just sayin'.

Boo!

"Uh, Mom?  They're touching me."

Yawn.  "I'm over this party, Mom."

And finally, it was Halloween night.  Ruby took a late nap, so I was able to dress her up and have her help me answer the door for trick or treaters.  For a little bit, anyway, she got tired fast.

She "helped" me make candy bar cookies while we waited for the doorbell to ring.

Like I said, she got tired fast, so we decided to put our candy out and make a little sign.  It read:  "Help yourself to some treats but beware!  If you wake the baby ghoul sleeping upstairs, you will be forced to perform the trick of putting her back to sleep!"  Ruby's room is right above the front porch, so I was pretty apprehensive about this plan...

It turned out I was right to be.  The kids that came were LOUD.  And the first group rang the doorbell anyway (wtf?).  It didn't end up mattering though, because after three groups of kids, the bowl was empty.  Yes, it was full when we left it.  I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of disheartened by this.  I knew there was a possibility that would happen, but in my heart I'd hoped the kids wouldn't be so greedy.  =( Oh well.

We never ended up carving our pumpkin (oops), but on the whole, it was a great first Halloween as a family of three!  I LOVED Ruby's costume (yes, I made it, and am tooting my own horn, but she was so stinkin' cute!), loved getting to go to the pumpkin patch (we actually went to another with our playgroup, but didn't stay long enough to take pictures, it was only 34 degrees that morning!), and loved seeing all the babies dressed up.  I can't wait until next year to take her trick or treating for the first time!  And I'll definitely be making her another pumpkin hat next year - so many people made comments about our little pumpkin-head.  Dressing up babies for holidays is so fun... bring on Thanksgiving!