Trick or Treat! (Part 1)

Would you believe after we finally got our new computer up and running and I did a blog update, the blog website would have the nerve to tell me I have reached my 1 GB of free space for photo uploads!?  What??

Seriously.  I did almost cry this time.

So for now I have found another more inconvenient way, but it works.  I am so angry at blogger!  Has anyone else experienced this?  I couldn't find any other way around it.

Anyway, I can't believe I'm doing our trick or treat post this late into November, but I want it in the books... even though I'm totally out of the Halloween mood and ready to move on to the upcoming holidays!  I mean come on, the local radio station is already playing Christmas tunes!  Ha!

We started at Ga Ga's house on Friday night and trick or treated at some of our family and friends houses, since our town's trick or treat was the next night.

We visited my brother and sister in law Tim and Cindy's house first.  Tim is my dad's son and he is such a reminder of dad to us!  Andrew has a special connection with "Uncle Tim."  He always gets quiet and serious but a very content look on his face whenever we are around Tim and Cindy.  He looks at him so sweet almost like he knows that he is somebody special.  I really believe that in a past life, Andrew knew his Grandpa Bill!  And Uncle Tim reminds him of his grandpa!

Next we visited my nephew Lindy and his wife Jenny.  They are having a baby and we are so excited for them!  I still can remember holding my nephew when he was just a baby!  How time flies!  Andrew loves them, too!

After that we made our way to our friends annual Halloween party at Andrew's friend, Norah's house.

It was so fun to see some of our old neighbors there too.  Years ago (before kids!) the Klocke's and the Pearson's and us all lived right next door to each other in our town homes.  We used to do lots of things together as couples and always had so much fun!  Since then, we've all moved to different towns and had kids, but we enjoy seeing each other when we get the chance to reconnect.  Here we are, 5 kids later! (One is not pictured).

 I got a kick out of Andrew teaching them how to play "doctor!"  Ha!  He definitely knows his fair share of that!

I also had to laugh when I looked over and Norah was on top of Andrew!  Haha!  He obviously didn't seem to mind!  They are so funny.  These two first met when they were about 2 months old.  It has been fun watching them grow up and be friends!

We spent the night at Ga Ga's house since the party went so late.  When we got up the next morning, we went out for breakfast and then took Andrew to this park that I used to go to all the time when I was little.  It has a big fire truck the kids can play on.

It seemed different to me, I'm not sure if it's because they changed it, or the fact that I haven't been there in about 30 years!  Ha!

Andrew had a blast running up and down!

And trying to drive!  He couldn't quite reach the pedals!  Ha!

You know, the more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that Andrew has never had the opportunity to jump in leaves...

He's deprived, I know.

In our defense, we don't have any trees in our neighborhood (at least not big, old ones) so we don't have many leaves around here!

There were plenty of leaves at the park though!  I love his "Andy" boot sticking up in the air!  Ha!

Andrew just loved making a pile and jumping in!  He was so happy and excited!

It was so fun to watch his huge smiles and hear his giggles.

Except when he got leaves in his boots... his socks ended up coming off too!  Silly boy.

He was running away from me, then he'd turn around and growl at me like he was a tiger!  Ha!

They have this really cool bridge where you can walk over a stream and see fish, etc.  He just had a ball doing this.

So much that this totally wiped him out!  We still had one more stop to make...luckily he could sleep in the car for about 20 minutes!

We had to stop by and show Great Gran Tootie our Woody outfit.  She was so surprised!  She didn't know we were coming, so Andrew walked in and surprised her!

I love this picture of the home of the Cyclones!  This was a game day so it was so bright and colorful in the stands.  It really puts you in the mood for fall!

After a busy weekend, part one of the trick or treating extravaganza was about to end while another was about to begin... our trick or treat night was that evening at home, and we had just about had it by this time, but we had to get out and try to keep celebrating!

We changed it up a bit by changing Andrew's costume... Bet you can guess what his other choice was (since we couldn't decide between 2 costumes this year!) :)  Ha!

More to come soon...

Night Eyes and Pumpkin Carving...Finally!

Finally!  I can upload again!  Whew.  We spent a good portion of our evening in the Apple Store and I am pleased to say that we finally can get rid of our old dinosaur computer!  Bring on the new iMac!  I am already loving it.  Thanks for all your suggestions- we went with the new desktop model.  You get more memory for a better price and I am used to a desktop anyway.  Anything was better than what we had, and I am just in heaven!

So...time for the long awaited update!

To kick of Halloween (I know, seems like forever ago!) we went over to Craig's brother's to carve pumpkins.

It was so fun!  We spread out newspapers everywhere and let the kids dig in!

Andrew wasn't too sure about the pumpkin "guts" but after some encouragement he did dig some out!  But he did want to wash his hands right away!  Ha!  I had to laugh, he is obviously my kid!

Grandma Huegel had to help since Andrew was somewhat grossed out!  Ha!

This makes me laugh.  Could he have stood any farther away?  He was so ready to be done and head down to play with cousin Jayden's trains!

Ew!

This cracks me up even more...Craig concentrating so hard on carving Andrew's pumpkin, when Andrew could care less (he was not into it!) and his back is to the football on TV!  Ha!  I'm sure he would have much rather been relaxing on the couch and watching it!  Andrew did end up loving the pumpkin when he was done!

He loved the pirate design!

With cousins Jayden and Evelyn

The kids were really excited to see all the pumpkins lit up on the front step!

See Daddy?  All that time and effort paid off!  He was one happy boy with his pirate pumpkin!  (Too bad it didn't last til Halloween!)

The next excursion was attending Night Eyes at the zoo with our friends Greg and Emily and their two boys.

I was really impressed!  This was my first year at Night Eyes.  They had a path you followed so you didn't miss anything, and there were different sections with themes.  Here are the boys walking through the tornado from the Wizard of Oz!

Of course, not complete without the wicked witch being crushed by Dorothy's house!

And the characters... handing out treats!

Somewhere over the rainbow...there's gotta be more candy!  Ha!

Andrew was amused to see Curious George!

And look who's peeking from behind the castle!

Clifford!

This is Andrew and his buddy Landon.  Landon's daddy, Greg, and I taught together for years at my old school and became great friends.  It is so fun to now get together as couples and watch our kids play together!

They had a cool pirate ship, too!

And a fun train ride!  Silly daddy in the background!  Ha!

Everything was decorated so neat!  The kids just loved it!

Craig even found time to be goofy!  Ha!

They had the characters from "Where the Wild Things Are," one of my favorite kids books!

They were so cool!  Like I said, I was impressed!

Andrew and Landon chased each other through the hay maze

Which lead to a corn pool,

When he saw this, he went crazy!  I was afraid I wasn't going to get him off it the rest of the night!

He just had the time of his life!

He loves these pedal tractors everywhere we go, but he never pedals!  Ha!

We just had the best weekend with our family and friends.  It is always so fun to get together before holidays and do things that put you in the mood!  We were definitely ready for trick or treat after this!

As we left Andrew said, "Come back see pumpkins another day!!"  He loved it!

I have lots more to update about our Halloween...and I hope to get it done before Thanksgiving!  Ha!  It has been so hard being without a computer.  So now it's time to play catch up!  

More to come soon...