Happy Halloween!

About a month ago, Connor was this scrumptious cheeseburger...

and then as the Halloween festivities began, Connor developed a love for Frankenstein.

I knew he'd make one cute one, so we traded in his sesame seed buns for this scary costume...

More photos to come :)

Halloween Madness

Matt & I have been saying all week...

"What will we do when Halloween is over?!"

We have been to several "fun places" the past few weeks to celebrate Fall Festivals and Halloween shananigans. Connor loves to scope out Halloween decorations everywhere we go! Here's a collection of the kiddie activities we've participated in lately. :)

My idea of family fun pumpkin carving went a little like this...

We encourage Connor to help scoop out the pumpkin gookies...

Connor thought the gookies were gross & decided to fling his pumpkin guts all over...

Since we had two pumpkins to work on and an uninterested child to entertain, the cooler caught Connor's interest :)

The next 3 hours were pretty much me entertaining Connor while Matt continued to plug away with the intricate detail of the pumpkins. Then just before Connor's bedtime, Matt's masterpieces were complete!

Meet Eeyore & Tigger
(There's one cute smiley boy in this picture...you just have to squint to see him!)

After a good picture of the pumpkins, I wanted a good picture of my little munchkin :)

Yesterday, we headed out to two Fall Festivals. Talk about kiddie fun overload! Connor had a blast & God Bless Matt for tagging along with a smile the whole time :)

Connor could not get enough of these creepy clowns. The one standing up was pretty nice & kid friendly, while the one sitting down clearly hated his clown life & had little patience for children! I got a kick out of the fact that Connor insisted on standing right in front of Mr. Crabby Clown & would randomly talk to him! We stood in front of these clowns for a good 30 minutes while they worked like turtles making balloon animals. It was free entertainment and Connor loved every second of it, so Matt & I waited patiently :).

I adore his precious face!

We headed over to see the firemen and get a close up look of their fire truck. We were happy to see "Fireman Dean" was there to greet us (my best friend's older brother). Connor looked so teeny weeny sitting up in the truck :)

I wished this picture came out a little better, but I had promised Connor we could go on the bounce house once we did the firetruck. I'm pretty sure Connor had the bounce house on his mind right about now...

After the Fall festival, we headed to a buddy's birthday party then rested up for another Halloween gathering at the local storage unit down the street (fun fun activities in Cape Coral!!). Connor had fun grabbing the candy from each booth, although he's not the candy eater at all. He enjoyed a few games, crafts, and checking out the Halloween decor.

Hope everyone has a happy Halloween! I'm gonna need to be extra creative to get Connor just as excited for Thanksgiving as he was for Halloween. :) Wish me luck!

The Great Pumpkin!

I am LOVING this Halloween stuff with Connor! Probably because he is LOVING all this Halloween stuff! We've stocked up on the cutest Halloweeny movies from the library (Charlie Brown, Mickey's Halloween, Charlie & Lola's Halloween). We watch one at least once a day now & Connor loves to recite many scenes from Charlie Brown (which I never notices how often they say "stupid" and call kids "block head" on Charlie Brown until I had a parrot of a child watching it!). Amazingly enough, Connor hasn't recited any of those parts! We scoped out the Halloween ad for Bass Pro Shops, so we headed there a few days ago to see all the fun stuff they had for kiddies. A trip to Bass Pro Shop is right up Papa's alley, so we, of course, had Nana & Papa tag along with us!

Papa & Mr. Mickey Ears checking out the boats on the way in to Bass Pro...

(Sidenote: It's the cutest thing ever to hear how Connor likes to "catch big fish or baby fish with Papa." He loves to "go fast Papa's boat," and is super cute when we drive over any bridge & Connor announces "Mom, I see Papa's boat!" and points off at any given boat. I'm looking forward to all the kid fishing tournaments that Connor can go to with his Papa & Uncle Craig in the future :)).


Nothing better than "Charlie Brown & Snoopy!!"


We tried a "take two" to see if we could get a better smiley face on Mickey :)

We then wandered over to try out some crafts. This lasted a good few seconds before Connor was ready to go see cooler stuff like the fish tanks!

The had a 'trick or treat' line going around the store with kiddies dressed up in costumes. We opted to not go around in the line and instead, to just beeline it to the nearest candy bowl for a "blue bobo-pop." Connor doesn't care for any candy--not even chocolate (I'm grateful for that)! He has warmed up to the idea of the lollipop though.

Sitting on the fish bench waiting for Papa at checkout.


We enjoyed a little walk to see the doggies in a costume contest before sitting down to supper. When we got home, we had to say hello to all of Connor's pumpkin buddies in the front yard! Connor informed me that he named his pumpkins recently and they go by the names of "Scary, Harry, Larry, Goofy, Mickey, Minnie, Daisy..." He decided to kiss them goodnight before we unplugged them and "let the pumpkins get smooshed" for bed!

This is my neighbor's house across the street. They are decorating fanatics!! They decorate for all holidays and fill the entire yard...(even for Valentine's day!). They've been up north the past few years, so when they came home before Halloween this year, we were so so so excited! Connor loves to go over into their yard (at least 3x a day!). It is the first thing that comes out of Connor's mouth when he wakes and the last thing that he wants to do before bed!
"Go see spooky Halloween stuff neighbor's house!"
(They have 6 giant inflatables, lights, graveyards, skeletons, pumpkins, etc)

This morning we walked over to say good morning to their stuff. I pointed Connor out to you in case you couldn't spot him! I'm sure the neighbor's love this little pajama'd boy in their yard every day, along side his crazy bath-robed Mom! ;)

Connor's favorite decoration!
"Fankensine"
This morning he told me,
"Connor sit with Fankensine. Mommy take picture. Cheese!"

Connor's love for Frankenstein motivated me to find another Halloween costume! We currently have two, so I have to decide which one I like best for Trick or Treating! Don't worry--pictures will come soon enough :)

Happy heart

Some days are harder than others & the adventures of single-momhood can sometimes seem overwhelming.

Just when I think God is handing me more than I should have to go through, he turns around and gives me moments like this to help heal my heart.

I love this child more than he will ever know.

Festive crafting

There have been a lot of fellow blog mommies taking on the pumpkin painting idea this year, so we decided that with a mild fever and 2 straight days of rain- It was the best time to try it out!

Although Connor (and most boys, I would assume..) is not much of a 'crafter',
he had fun slopping the paint on his baby pumpkins. It takes a lot out of this OCD Mom to not help, but I am learning to let go. I threw out several encouraging words along with a few "you sure you don't want to paint more than just the top of the pumpkin?!" and "you want to try fun polka dots or stripes instead of smearing the paint until it all turns black?!"... ;)
All the prep and the craft lasted a good 3 minutes, but we had a good time so thats all that matters!



Checking out the finished products while they dry. He was pretty proud!

I had the special treat of getting off work a little early today, so I rushed home to see all the fun crafting Connor did with his Nana while I was away. They did some drawing, painting, and cut & pasting. Here's one of his projects~

(Nana did the cutting while Connor did the glue-sticking)

We hope to carve the pumpkins on Monday.
Let the Halloween festivities continue!

Pumpkin patch flash back

Just for fun...

Here's to show how much my baby changes every year...

Pumpkin patch 2009


Pumpkin patch 2010

Pumpkin patch 2011

Connor & I had a serious talk & he promises he won't grow anymore :)

Pumpkin patch 2011

It's one of my favorite times of the year! We've made it an annual tradition to go to Grace Church's pumpkin patch (so I can take oodles of cute pictures of Connor in the patch). This is the first year Connor is SUPER excited about Halloween, so it made it even more exciting. Matt & I are feeling adventurous & decided to print two templates to attempt elaborate cut outs on our pumpkins this year. Since Matt & I are both indecisive and perfectionists, it took us a good while to find the perfect pumpkins! While we were off to find Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkins, Connor made his rounds trying to lift the biggest pumpkins he could! At one point, he walked up to a big pumpkin and exclaims, "This is the biggest pumpkin I've ever seen!!" It was pretty darn cute! We can't wait to carve our Eeyore and Tigger pumpkins! Connor's gonna love it! :)

Side note: You have no idea how hard it is to get an almost 3 year old to sit still, look at the camera, and smile. The secret behind these smiles were Matt and I shouting out words that Connor finds funny...such as "sweeeeet" and "sugar booger." Whatever works... :)

Disregard my mosquito eyeballs, Matt's hat sunburn, and Connor's look of distraction. We'll take any photo of the three of us that we can get! :)

Cutest little pumpkin ever...

Stay tuned for pumpkin carving photos next week :)

Papa's birthday!

From the moment I mentioned that Papa's birthday was coming up, Connor insisted we go get him a birthday balloon, party plates, and cake! I'm pretty sure Connor believes that its not a birthday unless you have all three of those! I think Connor was getting tired of me telling him that Papa's birthday was not today, but coming up soon. Once Connor woke on Papa's actual birthday, he knew it was party day! :) We enjoyed some family time at Nana & Papa's ...minus Auntie Katie :(. Connor enjoyed all the family attention and sugar!!

We enjoyed some 'fall like' weather during our walk around the block with our eyes peeled searching for "more ween stuff" (aka Halloween decor).





Connor and Gigi were coming up with their dessert strategy on which one they were going to try first :)

Cupcakes or cake...hmm...

When it was officially time to sing, Connor was beyond delighted!
"Happy to you, Happy to you..."
Seriously the cutest thing ever... :)

Helping Papa blow (sorry Dad...not the most flattering action shot...)

Literally less than 2 seconds after we were done blowing out the candles, Connor exclaims, "Cake, Taste it?!!"

No doubt Connor is my child!! :)

The traditional birthday-fire place-birthday banner-photo

A rare photo of the three of us :)
We may have double chins, but Connor is looking and smiling, so we'll consider it a success!

Happy birthday Papa (aka Dad)!
We love you so very much!!!!!!

In love...

Connor's in love with anything Halloween--ghosts, bats, witches, "anken-stine", etc

We took a ride on the Lakes Park haunted train ride yesterday
and it was a hit with Mr. Connor!



I'm enjoying every part of his excitement for the holidays!

I love him to pieces!!

Short and simple...

Want to see the cutest little boy in all the land???!!!

See below :)

All pictures were from an evening playing in the backyard (that was all fun and games until Mommy's malibu light was broken by you-know-who. After a short time out session, we quickly recovered and went to sit in the driveway to gaze over at our neighbor's elaborate Halloween yard decor. Simple pleasures!)

I'm snuggled up next to Mr. Adorable, himself, at the very moment. He's in the buff, has a grumbling tummy, and I have company coming for supper in about 30 minutes...so I don't have time to blog. Just know there are more adorable pictures to come from Papa's birthday party!