"Mera's Birfday"

Aka America's birthday.  Aka the 4th of July. ;)

I was reading last year's 4th of July post (I can't believe this was Ruby's 3rd one already!), and was pretty amused to see that we spent this 4th almost identically to the last.  Ok by me!

We kicked off the day with a patriotic breakfast of baked red white and blue donuts, which did not turn out all pretty like the recipe, but who cares?  Plus blueberries and raspberries.  Ruby was SO excited about the donuts!  I was excited that I'd made them the night before, so breakfast was festive and zero effort.

Donuts!!!

Then, just like last year, we put on our red, white, and blue, and headed down to the parade!  Ruby was really excited about this, too.  Especially when I told her it would be full of kids, dogs, fire trucks, candy, and grand old flags.  Which is what Ruby calls ANY flag she sees.  Grand old flag.  Always grand old flag.  I love that so much.

Walking to the parade with her own grand old flag.

Also like last year, we were able to snag a great parking spot, and an equally great spot to watch the parade.  I need to remember next year to bring our picnic blanket to drape over the curb like a bunch of other smarties did.  It was kind of dirty.  But whatever.  Ruby looked intense/pissed off in almost every picture, but she wasn't.  She was concentrating on taking it all in.  

She really just wanted to be RIGHT in front of or next to us - hard to take her picture that way!

Waiting for fire trucks.

Here they come!

And, of course, Sammy the Salmon.

These kids had sweet rides.

Gathering candy.

We were surrounded on either side by much older kids/teenagers, who were really intimidating to Ruby.  When the candy would go flying, she'd make a dash for it, only to have these older kids dive in front of her and take the candy that was nearest to her.  I was a little frustrated.  Not because I wanted her to have more candy (obviously), but because I could tell she was disappointed each time she reached for a piece only to have it taken out from under her.  I was also annoyed that these kids' parents let them do that to a toddler.

"Where'd the candy go?"

Highlights of the parade were when Ruby flipped off the firemen (accidently, of course, but very obviously), when she kept picking up candy and putting it into the other kids' bags (hey, she's good at sharing!), and when she picked up an Almond Joy and exclaimed, "Mommy chocolate!" and brought it to me (I plead the 5th on that one).

After the parade was over, we went looking for the two things we were interested in at the Heritage Festival last year, but didn't do.  And both weren't there!  We really wanted to give Ruby a chance to climb on/check out the fire engines, since she's been into them lately.  Last year we walked up just as they were finishing up, so this year we went there first...  And...  They weren't there.  I guess they didn't do that this year?  Or maybe they had an emergency?  Who knows.

So then we went to go get her a pony ride, aaaaaannnnd...  No ponies.  Boo!  There was some shooting obstacle course game in their place (because that's appropriate for children...).  Since we knew that Ruby would be too intimidated by the bouncy house and inflatable slides, we decided to head out.  No big deal, really.  We'd come for the parade, and had a good time!

Mr. G suggested we go out to lunch.  Ruby had been lamenting the loss of her purple Red Robin balloon (it deflated after weeks), so he asked her if she'd like to go there for lunch and to get a new one.  Would she ever!

Her face after we told her where we were going.

Luckily they were open.  Apparently Mr. G had forgotten it was the 4th of July (?!?) when he suggested it, but they were, and no crowd.  Nice.  Except...  They were all out of helium!  No purple balloon!  I can't even tell you how many times Ruby asked us where all the balloons went during the course of our meal.  Thank goodness this child handles disappointment well.

We could tell that she was tired from all the excitement, so after lunch we headed home for nap.  Ruby suggested we go to the party store for balloons, but that wasn't happening!

I had made the comment early in the morning to Mr. G, that Ruby was so lucky.  All of her 4th of Julys had had amazing weather!  So rare for Washington!  Well, of course, during nap the clouds roll in.  Boo!  We had big plans to fill the swimming pool after she woke up, but "Mr. Golden Sun" was hiding.  Ruby was happy to play with her water table instead, though, and we put her in her festive swim suit anyway, since she's so splashy these days!

Funny story, I walked outside to set up the water table, and felt a drip land on me.  I was like, "Ugh!  Rain?" then I looked down at my chest (where I'd felt the drop), and realized a bird had pooped on me!!!  So gross!

While I cleaned up, the rest of the fam busted into a bag of Boom Chicka Pop(corn) that I'd bought specifically because it was the 4th and had the word "BOOM" on it.  Oh, and I got the "minty" bag, because Ruby is obsessed with all things minty.

Turned out to be a good call, because the three of us ate almost the entire bag!  I don't even really like popcorn, but this stuff was good.  You can tell by the dog photobomb above that Braidy really wanted to try it, too.  Too bad, dog!

Side note:  Later, Ruby was carrying the bag around, talking to herself, and we heard her say, "That's 37!  There's a 37 on there!".  Mr.G and I gave each other wtf faces, because seriously?  How in the heck did she know that that number was 37 (it says "37 calories" on the bag)?!?  We're still blown away by that one.

In addition to her popcorn snack, I also gave Ruby some festive watermelon that I'd cut into star shapes and skewered to a patriotic paper straw.

This might be my new favorite picture of her.

She was SO tickled that the watermelon was star shaped!  And on a stick!  It seriously made me want to cut up other food into shapes.  It wasn't even that hard (I used a cookie cutter), so I guess I am totally turning into that mom.  

After a dinner of BBQ chicken, hot dogs, and more watermelon stars, we decided to go for a family walk around the neighborhood.  Ruby decimated her dress with watermelon juice, so she needed a little wardrobe change first.

Throughout the whole day, she'd been saying, "Did you have fun at the parade?".  Meaning she had fun at the parade.  We had told her it was a celebration of America's birthday, so on our walk, she kept singing "Happy Birthday" and told us over and over that she was going to "Mera's birfday party!".  Yep.  We about died.

We debated long and hard about whether or not to take Ruby to see fireworks this year.  They are illegal in our town, so unless you want to break the law, you have to go to an orchestrated show.  None of the shows around here started until after 10pm, so we ultimately decided not to do it.  It turned out to be a good call, because we could tell she was exhausted by 7:30 when she announced it was time to put on pajamas.  

You can usually see fireworks from our bedroom window, but with the cloudcover, there were almost none to be seen.  You could definitely HEAR them, though.  Luckily, Ruby was too tired to care.  The booms didn't stop her from going to sleep, and while she would stir when a really loud one would go off, she never got up, and slept straight on through till morning.

All in all, it was a great 4th.  Mr. G and I both have hopes that we'll have moved out of our tiny townhouse by the next one so that we can host a party (fingers crossed), and maybe just maybe Ruby will be able to hang long enough to see some fireworks. 

I hope you all had a lovely, fun-filled Independence Day! 

Merry Christmas!!!

I hope you all had the most amazing time this holiday season.  I'm still coming down off the high of being a parent at Christmas.  This was Ruby's second Christmas, of course, but her first where she actually kind of knew what was going on and it was SO MUCH FUN!  Since I've been pretty much MIA from the blog the entire month, I need to go and do a little recap of the holiday season.

We kicked it off with a visit to our favorite tree farm to find the perfect Christmas tree.  It was freezing cold that weekend.  Like, in the 20s, which it basically never is in western WA.  So Mr. G declared that he was absolutely not cutting down our tree, and if we wanted one, it had to be a pre-cut.  Ha!

We found the perfect tree - tall and narrow.  Emphasis on the tall.  Somehow we ended up with like, a 10 foot tree!  Luckily we have oodles of ceiling height in our living room.  I also remembered that they have a Santa at this tree farm.  We tried seeing him last year, but he was on his lunch break.  Not the case this year!

Ruby was NOT into sitting with Santa.  In the pic she's asking for me, lol.  She didn't cry, but she didn't like it.  Funnily enough, after that day she would say, "Ho ho ho!  Lap?  Picture?" over and over.  And if you'd ask her if she wanted to sit on Santa's lap and take a picture, she'd say, "yeah!!!".  Goof.

So we took her to see Santa and get our "real" picture done in her Christmas dress.  Mr. G had the great idea (not) to go after nap to the mall Santa on a Saturday.  Which meant we waited in an hour long line right at dinner time.  But Ruby was a total rockstar.  She loved the reindeer flying over the center of the mall, and the people watching.  When it came time to sit on Santa's lap for her picture, she was again, not into it.  And offended by the camera's flash.  So we ended up with our second annual awkward Santa pic.

Our plan was to take Ruby over to the Red Robin at the mall for dinner after.  You have to go outside the main mall to get to it, and as soon as we stepped out the door we were stopped in our tracks by a HOARD of people.  We'd forgotten about Snowflake Lane, a nightly music/light show they do out there.  It was insanity.  So we bailed and headed back towards home (where there's another Red Robin).  It was after 8:00 before Ruby got any dinner, but she was totally chill!  We were so impressed with her ability to hold it together in a weird situation, and so thankful.  We were totally aware that not every toddler would put up with that!

At home, we decked our halls with our giant tree, our handmade stockings, a gingerbread man garland (because of the "five little gingerbread men in a row" song we learned at school), and the Pinterest felt Christmas tree.

Plus Christmas jammies, plates, Santa sippy, reindeer antlers and festive outfits.  Ruby loved it all, but was especially obsessed with reindeer.  In fact, she can now say the word "reindeer" incredibly well.  Christmas comes out "ki ki", and Santa is just "ho ho ho", but reindeer she's got.

I tried to do as much shopping online as possible (ha!), and nearly broke my hand making many of the gifts as well.  Ok, not really, but basically every nap time was dedicated to crocheting or sewing, and now my hand absolutely needs a break.

Ruby's handmade Christmas consisted of a dolly, play food for the kitchen Santa brought her, and an apron & oven mitts as well.

I also made a scarf for my step-mom.  Did I mention my hand hurts?  Ha!

Finally, finally the presents were wrapped, the cookies were baked.  After going to two separate grandparent's houses last year, we vowed that Christmas would henceforth be at our house (or at least it would this year).  So the house was cleaned, and it was finally Christmas Eve.

Ruby helped me check the mailbox for some very last-minute gifts (and our Christmas cards, argh!!!), in one of her festive outfits.

In case you're wondering, both Snapfish and the USPS are on my naughty list.  Art.com and FedEx are on the nice list (and Art.com makes the most amazing photo calendars).  In fact, FedEx delivered gifts at 7:00pm Christmas Eve.  Talk about cutting it close!  We were sad that they didn't knock when they dropped them off, as we had a box of homemade cookies all packed up to give the driver for being out on Christmas Eve.

Since we were hosting the next day, we wanted to keep our Christmas Eve dinner simple.  So I surprised Mr. G & Ruby with a homemade Christmas tree shaped pizza.  They both loved it so much - I think it may be a fun new tradition!

Ruby and I made pumpkin pies after dinner.  Well...  We tried to.  I guess I overfilled them, but right after they went into the oven, one of the pies dumped custard filling all over the bottom of my hot oven.  What a mess!!!  I had to turn it off and wait for it to cool down so I could clean up and try again.  Let me tell you - scrubbing out my oven was not what I pictured myself doing on Christmas Eve.

Ruby didn't want to go to sleep (maybe she wanted to wait up for Santa?) so I scrubbed, while Mr. G put her to bed.  Then I had to get to work building the play kitchen we Santa got her.  That thing was no joke.  But by the light of the tree, and with the Christmas Story marathon getting started on tv it was pretty fun playing Santa!  Oh, and the pies baked perfectly after that, so we were off to bed.

Ruby woke just before 6am (barf) so I brought her back to our bed so we could sleep more.  She & Mr. G snored away, but I never got back to sleep.  So I got up, made some coffee and baked our traditional Christmas morning Monkey Bread, and made sure Santa's loot looked perfect.  Finally, it was time for our little girl to see what the big guy had brought!

First peek at the tree before coming downstairs.

Toys!

She wasted no time getting into this bag!

We finally had to point out the kitchen to her, but then it was pure joy!

Time for stockings!

Serious unwrapping concentration.

Daddy and Braidy had to help her "opo" this one.

And then I stopped taking pictures and we got to opening the gifts under the tree.  Ruby got into ripping the paper and had herself a grand old time.  The kitchen was a HUGE hit, and the crocheted eggs I made her seem to be her favorite.  Which is good, because they were a major PITA.  Ha!  Once gifts were opened, we trekked up to the kitchen for our traditional Monkey Bread and eggs for Christmas breakfast.  Ruby thought she'd died and gone to heaven with the sugariness of it.  Then she went back to playing and we got to work cleaning up before family came!

As I stepped out of the shower, Mr. G came in to tell me he'd gone to start the ham, and smoke was POURING out of the oven!!!  We're guessing there was some dish soap residue from when I'd cleaned it out the night before (that pie mess wouldn't come out without it, but I thought I'd rinsed it completely).  But it was so strange because we'd cooked the pies and bread without a problem!  Our house smelled HORRIBLE and was full of smoke, so we had to open all the windows.  A bit later, he told me that it was ok and now the ham was cooking.  So who knows what happened, but I guess this was the year we almost burned the house down.  Twice.

When I was getting Ruby into her Christmas dress, she told me she wanted to go down and "cook eggies".  Which is exactly what she did.  And I died of the adorableness of it all.

Soon, our relatives came pouring in.  My mom, dad & stepmom, Mr. G's parents and brother, and my older brother, sister-in-law, and niece were all here.  The only one missing was my little brother (in DC with his girlfriend's family.  I stopped taking pics again and just enjoyed it.  Everybody brought food that we grazed on all afternoon.  Ruby and her cousin Frankie (almost 5yrs) played together the whole time.  It was the first time I'd really seen her play with another child, not just alongside, and it was so amazing.  

We skipped Ruby's nap, and even though we could see her getting more and more tired, she was SUCH a little trooper.  Her sweet, charming self the whole time.  Not one single meltdown.  It was more that I could ask of any toddler, and we all just marveled at her.  

There was more gift opening, of course.  Ruby played Santa.  As long as you told her who a gift was for, she'd hand it to the right person.  It was adorable, of course.  Then more eating, drinking, being merry.  Oh, and my brother brought these remote control helicopter things, which basically turned the men into little boys.

We Skyped our other brother.  Talking to his nieces was the highlight of his night.

Ruby could barely keep her eyes open anymore, and just about fell asleep in Mr.G's arms.  So he took her up to put her to bed, and she fell asleep mid-diaper change!  That's a sign of a kid who enjoyed some Christmas, I think!  Our family gathered their things, and everyone made their way out to go home.  Mr. G and I cleaned up a little bit, but decided just to leave it and watch the last few minutes of the last airing of a Christmas Story.

All in all, it was a perfect day.  A great shindig with the family.  Everything turned out great, everyone got along and had a good time.  And best of all, Ruby did.  We couldn't have asked for anything more.

I hope that all of your holidays were as wonderful as ours, and merry everything from our family to yours!

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!