Halloween 2011

Halloween is definitely one of our favorite holidays of the year. Is it even considered a holiday? Well it should be! :) Our halloween started a few days early with carving out the pumpkins. The kids love the carving part but not really the emptying of the pumpkin. With a little help, they managed to prep their pumpkins and this year, Gavin got to take part in it! He loved carrying around a big spoon and playing with the seeds and stringy insides of the pumpkin.


This pic is a little blurry but too cute not to post, see his top teeth coming in finally?
Owen carving shapes into the back of his pumpkin:


The final product, not too shabby, right:

Then we continued our halloween weekend by going to a party at my cousin's house. We were all excited to dress up! It was a lot of fun and this is probably the first year that the kids have worn their costumes more than once! In fact this year, they wore them a total of four times, talk about getting my money's worth! :D
May's cute halloween decor:



The cutest spider ever:


He's not as high as it looks, :P

Then finally, halloween night came! And you know how much Justin LOVES to scare the trick-or-treaters! Well this year, we put our canopy up in front of our garage, blocked off the front portion of our garage with some tarps and Justin set up a scary chop shop type of scene with cut off heads, fingers, feet and body bags. The only light came from the candles in the pumpkins and a strobe light aimed at Justin. And of course with some scary music, the scene was set. He said a lot of kids didn't even make it into the canopy to see what was inside so next year we are going to mellow it out a little. We'll see!


So imagine this picture really dark with just the lights from the pumpkins on the right, would you approach that man in the left corner just to get candy? Haha!
I finally remembered to take a picture of them trick-or-treating towards the end. Owen was getting a little tired, can you tell?

Fall Traditions

Going to Bates Nut Farm has become one of our annual family traditions. We love going there to see the many pumpkins, themed scarecrows, petting zoo and also go on the tractor hayride. It was a pretty warm day when we went, even though it was toward the end of October already. I guess that's your typical Southern California weather for you though! My brother, two cousins and their families joined us and it's always great getting our families together and seeing all the kids play together.

My very prego cousin, Carolyn who had her baby boy the next day:

Posing with the Brownie scarecrow:

And Jack Skellington:

On the tractor hayride:

Such cute kids:

Gavin with my brother, Mike (his Ninong):

Owen was ready for a nap:

Happy 4th Birthday Owen!

Last Saturday, our sweet son, Owen, turned 4! We asked him what he wanted to do last month and instead of having a party, he wanted to go to Sea World! OK! Sounds good to us! We all haven't been to Sea World in quite a few years so we were really excited to go. I checked out the Sea World website and decided that we should go to Breakfast with Shamu! It was such a great decision and I was so glad we did it. We left our house early to make sure we had enough time to get there and park and get through the entrance and have time to head to Shamu Stadium for breakfast. It was actually nice getting there early enough and there not being that many people there, yet. So during breakfast there were two whales that we got to see up close. It was really neat being that close and interacting with the trainers too. The breakfast buffet was great and very filling. We even had chocolate cake after breakfast and they sang to Owen too! It was such a fun day. The kids loved all of the shows and rides and can't wait to go back to see the animals again. A special thank you to my brother and his family for joining us on this special day.

During the month of October, Sea World celebrates Halloween and on the weekends, they have candy stations where the kids can go trick-or-treating. The kids actually brought their costumes and wore them for a little bit, but I didn't snap any pictures of it. Oops!

During Breakfast with Shamu:

Owen in awe of the whales:

Cake time:

With Mike, one of the trainers:

During the Shamu Show:

An attempt at a family pic during the Pets Rule show:

Savanna with her cousin, Maddy at the Shark Encounter:

My cute nephew, Mason at the Wild Arctic exhibit:

A great pic of Sea World surrounded by Mission Bay:

This was taken at 6:15pm. Owen seemed to still have lots of energy and was pretending to be an airplane flying around:

But just an hour later, he was passed out!

Happy 4th Birthday Owen! We had such a fun day with you and we love you so much!