Halloween 2013...

This year we had a little scarecrow at our house for Halloween!

[we gave out little bags of mini cheese balls, a la Sam's Club] 

Despite the big grin in the above photo, Deacon was not so excited about the costume being woken up from his nap so he already had an attitude problem when I put the costume on him.  Not to mention it was in the mid-70s outside while we trick-or-treated around the neighborhood.  Poor little guy.

He was kind of out of it while we walked around the neighborhood so we hit the road into town to celebrate Jeff's birthday after about an hour.  We came home and hung out for a little bit to see who would come trick-or-treating at our house, and then we headed to Outback Steakhouse for Jeff's yearly birthday dinner.

[observe the facial expression there in the center...

that's pretty much how he felt about the costume --

but he was dang cute, yes??]

Easter 2013

Easter Sunday this year dawned...well, not so sunny.  Or warm.  At least not to begin with.  It turned out to be a decent day, though, by the time we left church.  We had a great service, as always, celebrating the resurrection and saving power of our Lord Jesus.  I am so very thankful that I belong to Him, that He has made me free!

 

I tried again to coordinate our "Easter outfits".  It's a little more subtle than last year, but we are both actually coordinated with Deacon's little sweater vest.  Oh, he was SO handsome!  And bonus!  We found our friends, Larry & Kristen, as we were picking Deacon up from the nursery so I was able to have Larry snap some quick photos of us after church.  Larry was our photographer at both of Deacon's birthday parties.

As we did last year, we waited until after church to do Easter baskets.  I'm not even trying to deal with a kid who is either a) strung out on all kinds of candy, or b) pissed because we gave him the basket but told him he couldn't have any of the candy in it.

 

It was fun to watch him discover the basket and then look in it to find all the goodies.  We gave him a few books from the Target dollar section (that place NEVER fails me), some eggs filled with various candy including gummy bears (one of his faves) and peepsters (have you heard of these?  chocolate covered marshmallow, holla!), and a battery-operated Percy train.  He loves the other battery-powered train on his train table, and he loves Percy (Thomas' best friend :) so we figured that would be a hit.

 

 

And oh, boy...he's been introduced to Peeps.  These are Jeff's all-time fave Easter candy (I say yuk.) so I'm actually surprised of course, he shared with Deacon.  Well, what's not to like when you're a kid with a major sweet tooth??

 

Yeah, he's a fan.

 

 

 

I'm just gonna eat ALL of this candy right now, mkay??

halloween 2012...

We're not big celebraters of halloween, really.  I'm personally not into all that halloween represents; I'd much rather celebrate my husband's birthday, which happens to fall on the same day.  :)  That said, it is kinda fun to dress kids up while they're young, and to see what their reaction is when you tell them it's okay to go to your neighbors' houses and ask for candy.

 

I mean, really.

 

How awesome is this?!  :)

 

Deacon is very much into trains right now so we had already decided to do a train theme for his birthday party.  Considering that we already had some train paraphernalia, it was pretty easy to come up with his costume. 

 

And what an adorable little train conductor!

 

 

We had several trick-or-treaters come to our house, and then we took Deacon to a few of the houses in our neighborhood before it got dark.  He did great and the way he says "trick or treat!" is so cute!  It sounds more like "tricky treat". 

 

Yeah, sometimes.

 

Anyway, he was very polite, saying thank you when getting his piece of candy, and he even tried to trade out a few things, putting some of his candy into their basket.  :)

 

 

 

 

 

Once we were done with that, we headed into town to celebrate Jeff's birthday at his fave restaurant: Outback Steakhouse.  That's pretty much an annual meal.  We ALWAYS go there.  And that's okay, cuz we don't go there very often during the rest of the year.  Everyone thought Deacon was so cute (duh. :).

 

I would say we were much more successful this year than last with the whole halloween thing -- anyone remember how those photos turned out??  We had fun watching Deacon experience something new.  Even if we do have to explain to him (A LOT) that we can't have chocolate all the time.