Celebrating 87

When you pass 80 in our family you get a big party every year complete with a house full of family, a lovely dinner and a cake with the number of candles equal to your age. My grandma turned 87 this week and 30 or so of her closest family wanted to help her celebrate.

Our sad attempt at a German Chocolate cake. It never made it to the party. The frosting was too clumpy to present to even family. Maybe next year for #88Some second cousins. ( l-r Tim, me, Amy, Jason ( my brother) , Michael and Chris.)

Hovering around the birthday girl. My mom made her wear a hat that looked more like horns instead of candles.

Double fisted.

Fire!!! She blew them out in a couple of blows too. Happy birthday Grandma. We love you and look forward to celebrating #88.

October and 85 degrees

We had a fun time at Bates Nut Farm last weekend with the Hayden's even though it was quite warm and crowded. What was started out as a crisp fall morning quickly turned to blazing hot day.
Stuffing the big mac's

The tractor tour

Costume finished with 2 weeks to spare. I still need to whip mine up and see if I can convince Tony to dress up in theme. Not too much cooperation modeling the finished product was offered up before bedtime. I am quite pleased with his little costume. I would have preferred to have his head be the octopus head but I know he would not have kept anything on his head for even a minute. Pick your battles as they say.

More Octoberness

Last weekend at the Carlsbad Oktoberfest. A very fun family event to kick off the fall season. Sooooo excited to be on a real firetruck.

Polka dance party!

Fun play date with Patrick and Liam at the Del Mar pumpkin patch.

Petting zoo

Handling the inventory

They are hired!!

Winding down

Have a lovely weekend.

Spooky in September

Pirate party at the Encinitas Library.

At least he is not eating the glue.

So excited for all of the Halloween spook, candy and decor. I am thrilled to display my score from last years 75% off sale at PB kids. I think they had so many left over from last year the decided to sell them again. I love it. The days are already stuffed with treats and fun things to do all month long. Brayden is quite fond of these singing toads to his right. They come with us everywhere. Hopefully the novelty will wear off or the batteries will run out of juice.


This year we are getting a jump start on the Halloween season. Tony is making some wooded lawn ghosts and scary critters, I am making a few things for the house in addition to the costumes. I am rather excited that we have started our projects and costumes early. We are even toying with the idea of having a Halloween party. Hooray!
Sadly we decided we will not be going to San Francisco for our belated anniversary trip. I was going to run my half marathon and Tony was going to cheer me on. Awwwwww... but actually it was a fair trade since we spent the majority of our anniversary night attending a surfboard auction ( but a lovely dinner followed). I was excited for the challenge of the run and have been diligently been running at least one distance run a week. I am running from our house to Seaside which is a milestone for me. The economics were not in our favor. When the cost for 2 days staying in dirty Union Square was exceeding the cost of 2 plane tickets to Hawaii , time to reevaluate the trip. I am fairly confident I can find a local race to sign up for here.

Savoring Summer

We spent the last week of summer doing a lot of hanging around. Realizing a little too late that we live in a home with air conditioning that works fantastic. One of the highlights of our week was a midweek boat BBQ. My dad put their boat in a slip in Oceanside and wanted to BBQ and have Brayden have his first harbor cruise.

His life vest made me nervous. I am pretty sure the coast guards would frown on it. We managed to keep him from climbing overboard. I will be in charge of selecting the vest for the next boat outing instead of my mom. She brought the one that looked the most comfortable.

My dad was THRILLED to finally take his Grandson for a ride. Tony goes fishing with him a lot but it usually takes drinks and food or a trip to Catalina to get the whole family on board.

THE NEW BED.........

The bed rail-the best $30.00 we have spent lately. Brayden and his parents love his big boy bed. (Did I mention Tony made the bed frame for him? I think I did) We obviously take every opportunity we can to point out how fantastic it is to keep the excitement of sleeping IN the bed alive. So far so good. He got a new rug to help hide the hideous green( new to him anyway- Thanks garage sale on Neptune), a new pillow, and gets to use his quilt I made for him before he was born.

A brief demonstration of how you access the top of my bed with the assistance of a friendly whale step stool.

This is right about where I lay down. Right in the middle.

And this is what I think of mom's lame useless pillows. And there is the quilt crumpled on the floor which she slaved over.

"daddy"

..is a quite a popular guy in our house these days. With Tony being extra busy with work and not being home as much Brayden has been at his side every moment possible. When Tony is gone his whereabouts are questioned repeatedly. Over the last couple of weekends we have made up for lost time by spending lots of time at the beach. First surf lesson.. A natural already

Changing the back brakes. Tony did both of our cars last weekend. I figure that saved us at least $600 for both of our cars in labor alone. Too bad the money saves has been earmarked to be spent on tires.

At the nighttime zoo with pal Liam.

***sleeping in crib continues to be a challenge but getting better. Maybe next week will offer a more promising update.

Escape artist

We have a few rough nights lately in our house. Our son has figured out how to climb out of his crib. He runs to my side of the bed and cries until he gets to come in our bed with milk. Last night I was tough and let him cry. He ran to his drawer and brought me ALL of his empty cups hoping one of them would get filled. So after 15 minutes or so I gave him milk and put him back to bed. He climbs right out, runs back to my side of the bed with milk climbing over me and settling in. After 2 times of this I caved in. Hopefully this is a phase. He never really cared to sleep in our bed before. As soon as I am able to go and purchase some bed rails, the crib is out and the big boy bed is coming down from the loft. Daytime has proved to be much fun. Over the last couple of weeks we have completed a session of swim lessons at the Y, gone on lots of runs to the beach, play dates and story times. Last weekend we even took Brayden to his first Padre game. He got to eat his first hot dog and liked it.

Go Padres!!!!I guess this was the view from our seats.
We never made it up there since we played at the tot lot until the 5th inning.

Posing with his new shirt and completed library activity card from the Carlsbad library's summer reading program.

He is quite a fan of the library. We have been stopping by a couple of times a week. They had a great summer program which just came to an end. He especially enjoyed bringing his card to the volunteer girls to get his activities signed off in exchange for a sticker or piece of candy. Fun!!!