The Dinosaur and the Flower

Last year for Halloween, our friends Corey and Blythe invited us over to their house for dinner and trick-or-treating. This year they did the same, so a few hours ago we headed to their house for an evening of fun. For the kids costumes this year, I snagged an awesome deal at a consignment sale a few weeks ago and got both costumes for $9! Here is a picture of the two of them together....this is best picture we could get because they were too excited/hungry/unwilling to sit still.

Parker was a dinosaur! I got this costume for $4, and there is even a button to push on the left hand that makes a roaring noise.

Sadie was a flower. Her costume cost me $5, and it still had the tags on it!

Here are Parker and Daddy heading out to trick-or-treat.

Sadie wanted to walk by herself, and she would not let go of her pumpkin basket for anything.

Waiting at a house....

The kids had a great time! Parker, my social butterfly, obviously loves seeing and talking to people, and Sadie was so polite saying 'tain too' (thank you) to almost everyone. We ended the evening by returning to Corey and Blythe's house where we had some amazing food, and we all decided that this is going to officially be our Halloween tradition!

Fall fun!

This morning we went to a local pumpkin patch called Colorado Pumpkin Patch. I was a little worried about waiting so late in the season to go, but other than some wind the weather ended up being pretty nice. They had a small petting zoo that the kids checked out....

Here we are waiting for our hayride to start....

....and all of us after the ride. The kids thought it was pretty cool!

We stopped to get Parker's face painted. What did he get? A pumpkin, of course.

Parker also had his first experience with a port-a-potty, and that's all I'm going to say about that.

The slides were one of the funnest parts of the pumpkin patch. They were actually really fast and quite fun. I went down with Parker, and Andrew took a video of it that I won't be sharing here or anywhere for that matter. Here is Andrew with Parker....

....and Andrew with Sadie.

Parker even went down by himself!

Here is Parker climbing the hay bale pyramid.

My little cuties.

Mommy and son....

Both kids enjoyed wandering through the straw maze.

Little diva crawling through the tunnel.

Ironically, one of the things Parker enjoyed the most was the corn box....basically a sand box filled with corn kernels instead of sand. He kept asking to play in it again and again.

We followed up our time at the pumpkin patch with some lunch from Qdoba. If you don't know what Qdoba is, I'm tuly sorry. They are doing a kids-eat-free weekend, so we obviously had to take advantage of that! Stay tuned for a post coming soon featuring a very handsome Dinosaur and a very pretty Flower....

Party like a D-I-N-O-S-A-U-R!

We had Parker's 4th birthday party on Saturday, October 9th. Parker is totally into dinosaurs right now, so I decided to do a dinosaur theme. We even started off the morning of his party with dinosaur shaped pancakes!

Parker LOVED this balloon! Good thing since it was not cheap....

We had some fun dinosaur-ish foods....green punch, green apples and caramel, chips and guacamole, and dinosaur chicken nuggets.

I even had a co-worker who does cake decorating on the side make this cake for Parker.

Opening presents....

Time to blow out the candles!

He had wanted some of his birthday cake all day long.

Eating cake with Cousin A....

Some of Parker's guests....

Family pic!

A four-year-old boy....

Parker's 4th birthday was on October 7. How in the world have four years passed since he was born??? I could launch into a long, drawn-out "mom" story about how he was born, how long it took, etc, etc, etc.....but I'll just go ahead and assume that most of you could do without the details. Here is Parker's last picture as a three-year-old....

 ....and his first picture as a four-year-old! Can't you see the difference????

I was working on Parker's birthday, which actually made his day. He loves to go to the childcare facility were I work and play with the other kids. Andrew even came and picked him up for a special father/son birthday lunch. Parker was so excited to go out to lunch by himself with Daddy! Andrew also took Parker shopping for a birthday present that Parker got to pick out....it came as no surprise to me that he chose a remote control Lightning McQueen car. When Andrew got off work that evening, we went to the park so Parker could try it out. Here he is in the car ready to go!

Trying it out....

Sweet little Sadie girl running around.

With our big boy!

Parker wanted to swing in the baby swing because it was next to Sissy.

After leaving the park, we went to McDonald's for happy meals and fun on their indoor playground. What more could a four-year-old ask for?