The Great Pumpkin

So we just took our yearly trip out to Heavenly Harvest for the fall festivities. We did all the usual fantastic stuff: duck races, hay bale maze, corn maze, corn cannon, pumpkin patch, corn box. Nick loved the hay bale maze - he ran through it yelling "this is neat!" He also had a blast in the corn box and left with quite a bit of corn stuck in his diaper and pockets. I discovered that dry corn can be re-plumped after going through the washing machine....

This year we had a larger crowd that came with us. Grandma and Grandpa Edwards and the Parker family (Misty, Emily, Staci and Gary) came as usual, but YaYa and Dza Dzu (Grandma and Grandpa Monroe) and Aunt Pili came as well. Also Nick's partner in crime, Jefferson and his daddy, Kirby joined us as for the fun. It was a great crowd!
Searching for the perfect pumpkin.

Father and daughter - Gary and Staci striking a pose.
Emily and the giant pumpkin!

Everyone in their game day orange.

And this is how we left with a pound of corn in Nick's diaper and pockets.

Jefferson climbing the hay stacks.

Nick keeps us laughing every day. The things he says just amaze us. Here are some examples:

1. We were out to dinner and Mike was reading the menu. Nick really wanted to play with the menu, but Mike told him to wait because he was reading it. Nick turned to me with this serious look on his face and said "Daddy not sharing, just reading it". And looked at me like - would you do something about it?

2. Nick was running his fingers through his own hair and saying "I have nice hair".

3. Nick was eating lunch and had a mouth full of food, he opened is mouth and looked at me, then said "Want mamma to look at it" and then opened his mouth again.

4. Mike was downstairs with Nick and he was yelling upstairs to me to get my attention and ask me a question. Mike was yelling "Hey Stac!" So now every time I run upstairs, Nick yells "Hey Stac" and cracks himself up.

5. We pretend we are in a boat (its a blowup dog full of toys that's as big as a bathtub) and I use whatever I can find for paddles. We paddle along picking up friends (a crab, a turtle, etc). Nick leaned over the side of the "boat" and said "jellyfish, want to eat blue one" and pretended to pick a jellyfish out of the water and eat it.

It is so much fun having conversations with him. I love it when he tells me stories and gets soooo excited to talk about things. This is such a fun age, and we are looking forward to Halloween this year. We'll see what he does trick-or-treating. Who knows what he'll do?

Portland Zoo

What happened to September? I don't know what happened. Could it have disappeared? Did the bump on my head cause amnesia? I have no solid conclusions, but here are some pictures from our trip in August to the Portland Zoo with my parents, my cousin Shelly, her hubby Jeff and their truly amazing daughter, Sydney.

As for the bump on the head story, it involved Nick, a gopher and a backwards whoop-dee-do. Feel free to fill in the blanks....


Monkey at the zoo...



Monkeying around....

What being two is all about....

Nick goes to Little Gym still once a week. I think it is his favorite activity. It's a 45 minute class that goes by super fast!

Bubbles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reaching for the bar. His favorite activities are the bars and the balance beam. When opening one of his birthday gifts the box looked like a balance beam. He tore off the wrapping and exclaimed "balance beam!" and immediately got on and started walking across the box.


Getting ready to do a backwards roll....
Hula Hoop!
So Nick and I practiced blowing out candles all week and he decided that it's pretty fun. He also liked his birthday cupcakes and ate all his icing, but only one bite of cake....
Sugar rush!!!!!!

Inspecting the cool presents.....it says "Tonka" we're cool...

Snoopy Golf clubs! Yipee!



What look I get when I tell Nick to smile for the camera and THEN I will play outside with him.
New helmet for the new tricycle, or just a new fashion accessory.



Terrific, tender, tumbler, tease, talker, toy time, and time outs - what being two is all about.

So we took Nick to Build-a-bear on August 12th. It was a blast! He picked up one bear, then we'd show him another animal. He'd trade us the first one for the second and on down the line until we finally settled on a doggie. Then Nick took off running out of the store and into the mall with an unstuffed animal.....

Then we got to pick out a sound button for the dog, I wanted to make him meow, but resisted the urge. We picked out the barking of course. Next we stepped on the peddle to make the stuffing go in the dog until he was soft and squishy. The best part came next when Nick got to pick out a heart, rub it on his nose, give it kisses and hold it on his own heart before placing it in his doggie. It was so cute how he cooperated and really listed to the girl giving him instructions, I couldn't believe that he did it all!

Finally the dog got a bath, some pajamas, slippers and his own little doggie to match. It turned out really cute and we had a ton of fun. Nick is still talking about it.

So I am now unable to move photos on the blog, sorry they are in a strange order. Our friends have been having the same problem on their blog for a while now and she hasn't been able to fix it. Hmmmm.....perhaps little Dilbert is needed.