Happy Halloween

This is unfortunately the only happy picture of Olivia wearing her original Halloween costume. Despite how much she loves Star Wars and how much time her and Niki spend doing light saber fights with night lights, she absolutely hated the Jedi costume Kelly slaved over. The cape that went with this tunic was really awesome but she didn't want anything to do with it. And yes, she put a pair of socks on her hands as gloves.

Olivia's best friend Ava came over for lunch today. Marie had bought the two of them hula outfits awhile back and Ava had brought hers along because she had planned to use it as her costume. Seeing the hula outfit on Ava, Olivia immediately wanted to wear hers.

Doing a dance

Olivia enjoying a caramel apple

Seeing that the hula costume made Olivia happy, rather than cry like the Jedi one, we gave her a choice between the two costumes for what she would wear out trick or treating. She couldn't have reached for the hula outfit faster. So, we threw on her a sweatshirt, the grass skirt, a couple of flowers, and left the house. I guess the lesson is that we should always have a back up costume.

Olivia started off trick or treating with a lot of enthusiasm between houses but would get very shy and insist on being carried as we got close to the doors. Toward the end of our loop she did break out of her shyness though and was brave enough to walk right up to the doors and get candy on her own. It probably did help that so many of the houses were of friends that knew her well. A couple of houses even had presents specifically set aside for her.

"smiling"

And on one of the last houses, Olivia got an up close encounter with a very large reptile (yes that is Kelly holding the snake).

Happy Halloween

Pumpkin Patch

This is now day two of staying away from the house. Grandma, Mark, mom and Olivia headed out to a pumpkin patch for entertainment.

Olivia cruising through the hay bale maze and climbing the mountain

This was one of the coolest things we've seen at any pumpkin patch. There was a giant "swimming pool" of dried corn kernels for anyone to jump right in and play. Olivia caught sight of it and started yelling, "Corn! Corn right there! Baby jumping in the corn!" On her first jump in, she had both flip flops on and then after stumbling around, both shoes were lost. It took almost ten minutes of sifting through the corn to find both of them. Olivia is looking for a missing shoe in the picture above and below. She wasn't much help.

Check out the height on that jump

Playground

Grandma and Olivia running soccer drills with Mark

Olivia was inside the tube laughing like crazy

Apple Hill

Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Mark made the long trip up to visit us this weekend. While Dad and Grandpa turned the house into a construction zone, Mark, Grandma, mom and Olivia headed to Apple Hill. What an amazing place and one that we might be back to for blueberry season as well as next year's apple.

We checked out a small fruit stand where Olivia picked out a couple apples and here we are waiting in line for some apple cider donuts.

And then it was on to the apple orchards. By the time we headed home, we had accumulated close to 30 lbs of apples, two apple pies, 5 caramel apples, three chocolate caramel covered marshmellows, two cider donuts, and a jug of apple cider. Awesome day.

Olivia's big bite of her prized Granny Smith. She did go on to finish almost the entire apple despite the first shock of sour.

Baking Pumpkin Bread

Now that we are so close to Halloween, Olivia and I decided to have a mom and baby afternoon devoted to baking the first batch of pumpkin bread for this fall. You know what ended up being just as fun of a mess as packaging peanuts? Flour.

Olivia "painting" my pants with flour

God-dad's New House

Olivia found an empty bed and couldn't resist jumping

Getting the dryer hooked up

O E Yah

It only took her a little more than two and a half years. Baby has become O E Yah.

Pumpkin Time

If you remember seeing pictures from us visiting this pumpkin patch last year, then you should remember how much Olivia loved the entire barn filled with the most adorable baby animals. This year the baby animals were just as adorable but Olivia had absolutely no interest in even petting them. She did try to bury a baby rabbit with hay though.

This is Niki trying to get her to pet a baby goat. No luck.

The one thing that did really interest Olivia was all the wonderful hay. She loved climbing the mountains built out of hay bales and even playing in the maze.

The next stop was the actual pumpkin fields. One field was filled with the perfect Olivia sized pumpkins but we never found "the one."

So what did we do? We bought some big pumpkins at the grocery store for about half the price :)

Big Owies

This week has been all about Olivia beating herself up. On Monday she was dancing and twirling in the backyard and fell into one of the patio chairs. On Tuesday she fell onto a toy block. The shadow under the left eyebrow is from the patio chair and the perfect 90 degree angled bruise/cut is from the toy block (on the chin). Ouch.

Olivia carrying one of her biggest sticks yet.

Ducks A'muck

We had some visitor ducks come by the playground and they at once really loved Olivia. Those guys followed her around for quite a while before they realized she didn't have any food to offer. Olivia is sporting some items from her new winter wardrobe. Notice the triple roll pants (above).

"smiling"