Visiting my old Roomie

Right after Ryan's b-day we headed down to AZ for 10 days. One of the things I like to do is visit my old roommate, K. She was one of the best roommates I had and we had a lot of fun for two years. We did our student teaching at the same time. She has two kids, the same ages as mine, so it is really fun. This time, we got to see her house, which I love. K, you really need to come visit and help me decorate my house. The kids had a great time playing, especially because S dressed up like Jessie, so we had Woody and Jessie running around. K had some really fun Halloween crafts for the kids. Here they are showing off their foam Jack-O-lanterns
And then they decorated cupcakes. These were a huge hit.
The best part about visiting is that because we each have blogs we can keep up with each other and our visits seem more like we see each other all the time.

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Ryan turned one last month. I can't believe it's already been a year. Here is my cute, smiley, boy.
He spent the day relaxing and hanging out, staring at the fan among other things.
We actually had his party the night before. I made up these quick invites
And made this cake. This one took way less time than JJ's first cake. In fact, it was such a positive experience that I might do it more often.
He loved his balloons
But he was not so into his presents. JJ ended up opening all the gifts.
He was really happy in this picture.
Was slightly concerned when we started singing Happy Birthday.
JJ blew out the candle.
And this is honest to goodness the messiest he got. He loved the cake, but kept it clean.
At 1 year old, he just barely made the 20 lb mark, so we could turn his seat around. He's pretty tall at 30 inches. He needs 9-12 month pants for the length, but I have to safety pin them because they fall down.

He's walking a little bit more and feeling more confident, but I wouldn't call him a walker yet. He loves to play with hair, especially mine. He idolizes his big brother and wants to do everything JJ does. He makes silly faces all the time and is really good at imitating sounds he hears and making funny noises with his mouth and tongue. Sometimes he just cracks himself up with the noises he can make. He loves Baby Einstein still, loves animals, especially dogs, and reading. His favorite book right now is The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

His vocabulary is growing, which has reduced the screaming a little, but not nearly enough. Just like his brother, I tried to teach sign language, but he just learns the word instead. Appropriately, most of his words surround food. Yogurt, cracker, milk, juice, drink, cheese, cake (for pancake), dig, out, ball, bath, dog, duck, truck, balloon, dada, yes, light, and stairs.

Happy Halloween

These are my cute little trick-or-treaters. JJ, or Woody, as he likes to be called, has been wearing his costume everyday for 6 weeks. Ryan is wearing a much loved and handed down Mickey Mouse. He wasn't thrilled about the ears at first, but it grew on him and he was gracious enough to smile big for the camera.
Friday night we finally got around to carving our pumpkins. JJ was so excited. Saturday we did our trick-or-treating. When I asked some of our neighbors when we go trick-or-treating they looked at me like I was dumb and said, Saturday of course. It's just an unwritten, assumed thing, you don't go trick-or-treating on Sunday. It was great of course. We got our celebrating done and I took down the Halloween decorations all before November 1st.

Happy Halloween!