Happy Halloween!

We were blessed with another beautiful day outside today.....so bring on the candy!!

Don't worry kids, Henry inspected your candy with love. Don't worry parents, if you see teeth marks, they're just Henry's :)

The cheeseburger (yes, with a moose hat) headed out in the wagon when it was still light out to stop by a few neighbors' homes.

He certainly didn't want to leave his best pal, Lucy, behind!

Rohit, aka Thomas the Train and Diya, the lion

Our last stop of the night was at Henry's girlfriend, Finley's, house for a goodnight kiss from his little lion :)

Mr. Pumpkin is so sad now that Halloween is over :(

We hope everyone had a safe night!

halloween parties

We've had lots of Halloween parties to attend lately, and therefore many opportunities to dress up as a juicy cheeseburger!

A couple weeks ago, we were invited by a neighbor to her office's parking-lot-pumpkin-party. Seriously, tons of pumpkins lined the parking lot, and Henry picked out just the right one to bring home. They had a fire truck and police car there - shocking I know, Henry was a fan of the vehicles.

Let's hope this is the only time we're sitting in a police car!

Just checking the air pressure.....good to go!

One attempt to get a posed picture by the fall decorations.

This past Sunday, we went to Boo Zoo at Como Zoo. We didn't get to see too many real animals, as it was night-night time for them, but the zoo did have 200 volunteers dressed up in costumes of various animals. Henry definitely wanted to stick close by his dad, and was a little stingy with his high-five's for the "animals". Definitely no posing for a picture with any of them!

We met up with Kate, Anna, Ben, and Tommy at the end!

Today, all the kids in Henry's library group managed to kick up their heels with a costume party! All of the songs and rhymes and stories were all about Halloween. Lots of great costumes - a dog/cat/brother/sister combo, a couple cows, a monkey, and Henry's little girlfriend, Brinley aka Pebbles.

Here we have a good ol' parachute activity going on.

Here Henry's trying to give Brinley a hug, but she was having none of it, running towards her mama!

He did manage to sneak in some serious book-reading when Jill brought out all the toys at the end :)

Now that we've broke in the costume, looking forward to Halloween!

just playin' around

There's been no shortage of playin' around for Mr. Henry lately :)

So, Miss Greta came to town this weekend and he has been having just an absolute ball with her. The ladies all took Henry to the pumpkin patch on Friday when Mama was at work and apparently, Henry was a big fan of mini donuts! Now, those of you who know of Henry's strong dislike for anything sweet may be as shocked about this as I was. Of course I didn't believe it when I heard it, but here's the proof.....sugar lips!

Are they twins (we did get asked that at lunch today, by the way)? Here the babes were modeling their adorable matching (knitted by hand too) sweaters from Kris and her mama, Bev. Thanks, ladies!

Lunch date with my gal, Greta.

We stopped at Cub to decorate a Halloween cookie today. Henry's love of sweets with the mini donuts sure didn't last long, no cookie for me please, I'll just play with the sprinkles instead.

Apparently, there was plenty of modeling being done this weekend!

Here we are in our Henry & Greta shirts made by Matthias' mama, too cute, thank you!

Recently, we had some neighbors over for dinner. They have 2 little ones, Rohit is almost a year older than Henry and his little sister, Diya is just a month younger than Henry. They're super nice people and we love to have such great neighbors. Henry sure does look up to buddy Rohit, literally, he's looking up to him in this picture. All night, he followed Rohit around and copied whatever he was doing!

All the kiddos snuggled in for a good book!

All in all, such fun play dates we've had lately! Looking forward to many more!

"carving" pumpkins

So, Target has these super cute kits that you can use with little ones to "carve" a pumpkin, aka push little pegs into the pumpkin to decorate it. It's genius, and they have a bunch of different kinds, a princess, a cowboy, a pirate, you name it. Henry and I chose a skeleton pumpkin, I know, how spooky!!

After just a few pieces, the plastic container became much more interesting!

Alright, break time is over, back to work!

Here's a kiss for good luck before I put you out in the cold weather for all those traveling by to enjoy!

Ta-da.....Mr. Skeleton Pumpkin.....made by yours truly with lots of love :)

Henry just had to put his nose way up by his right ear. I would try to get him to put it in the general vicinity of where a nose belongs but nope, right there please Mama.

(if you look closely, you can see where he slobbered.....I mean kissed Mr. Pumpkin, too funny)

first "professional" haircut

We figured it was time for an official haircut for little Henry as his blonde locks were getting a bit on the scraggly side. We headed over to Kids' Hair and saw a nice lady named Rochelle. After about a minute (which felt like an hour in public) of absolute screaming/eyes closed/tears streaming down his face, the remainder of it went great.....until, that is, when Rochelle brought out the "tickle brush" (aka the brush that gets rid of all the little hairs around his neck and face), then we had one more short burst of tears before we got out of there safely and with a smile!

The finished project.....one handsome little boy :)

wedding photo

I'm flashing back here to Tante Kathryn & Onkel Matthias' wedding this summer (one of my only photos of our handsome little ring bearer from that beautiful day, thank you Kathryn). Check out this pic of the gorgeous couple, Henry and Greta, the flower girl, that is.....and the bride and groom don't look too shabby themselves :) Oh, what a wonderful day that was! Henry and his new Onkel Matthias enjoy giving high five's and reading books on the porch together.

(photo taken by Brooke Ringdahl at http://tarookephotography.com/)

Go Lynx!

Henry heard there was going to be a rockin' parade going through downtown this morning, so he hopped on the band-wagon to come support the Lynx, aka 2011 WNBA Champions!

Soaking it all in.....very intently I might add!

"Hey Henry, yeah it's you I'm pointing to, thanks for being such a big fan!" says Lynx head coach and WNBA coach of the year, Cheryl Reeve.

"Oh, don't make me blush, coach!"

This was the best photo I could get (and a poor one at that) of the Minnesotan, Lindsay Whalen.....the WNBA finals MVP, Seimone Augustus.....and the WNBA championship trophy. The paparazzi were too much to handle to try to get a good pic, and security was tight!

Go Lynx!

workin' at the car wash

Despite feeling quite under the weather this weekend, Henry mustered up the strength to help his dad wash the cars on this beautiful sunny afternoon. Seriously, we are LOVING this late summer weather here!

As you can see, he is all business here. no monkeying around!

First, one must drag out the hose.....

.....then, one must pour in the car wash soap.....

.....then, one must drag the bucket around for a little while.....

.....lastly, one must spray off the soap.....ok, he's finally monkeying around now, loves spraying that hose of course!

Mama does love a clean car.....thank you Henry Thomas!

pumpkin patch

Again, what a beautiful day we had today, so we hit up the Anoka County Farms pumpkin patch this afternoon. Sooooo many things for the kiddos to do, Henry certainly didn't get bored!

Why does he insist on trying to pick everything up? Here he had to pick the heaviest pumpkin around and attempt to lift it.

Bummer, not happy at all when he couldn't move that darn pumpkin! Check out that scowl :)

What is a pumpkin patch without a hay ride?

When we were standing by this turtle, I asked Henry if he would give the turtle a hug, and before he actually gave it a hug as you can see here, he gave a random little girl standing near us a hug. He must have thought her name was turtle:) Oh, such a gentle little lover that Henry Thomas is, and I love it that he's such a sweet boy!

This is as close as I could get to a pic of him checking his height, much too busy! We'll say he's 2 feet + a hand tall.

Ducks, and roosters, and hens, oh my. Henry wanted to get close.....but certainly not too close.

I've said it before, put a steering wheel in his hands and he gets an instant smile on his face:)