Parties and Shopping Carts

Today was a big day for Brent - 10 years with his current company! Actually, I think his real anniversary is later this month, but today was the department party for him and several other people celebrating 5 and 15 years.For some reason this picture won't flip properly. In the corporate magazine for anniversaries they had his picture and the name Yasmine in some big goof-up, so his ever-so-funny coworkers put Yasmine on the cake.
And then they made this kind of weird poster honoring the people celebrating their anniversaries. I guess this is how graphic designers party!
Tonight we had dinner at Waffle House and then went to Target. Of course the bulk of Lilli's time was spent playing with all the baby dolls and toys.
But the one thing she couldn't live without was this little grocery cart. We had already seen it in the Target Toy Catalog we got this week on a big sale for $11 (a great deal since it's full of play food). It was the last one left and she was just in love with it.
She pushed it all over the store and would stay right with us. She was totally cracking people up just running through the store with it.
This one cracks me up, you can tell how fast she's running by her stride.
And she liked it so much she would actually listen when we told her to stay near the main cart.
So she got to come home with it and we even let her push it through the parking lot since I held onto her and she actually listened and followed right along with Brent. It even had to sit in the backseat next to her and the whole way home she kept one hand on it. HA!
I think it will be a nice indoor toy since it's going to be SO cold this weekend!!!

Halloween Night

We already knew Lilli wouldn't want to wear her costume, so it was no surprise that we pretty much had to tie her down to get her in it, and that she was crying and having a fit about it. BUT, when we asked her if she wanted to go on a wagon ride and saw the little Toto dog in my basket she got over it pretty fast. But she didn't have to be happy about it, ha!I was able to raid Lilli's bow stash and get a couple of matching bows for my hair, a bonus of a little girl!
Poor Brent had to be the Wicked Witch. I have a scarecrow hat and I KNOW I saw it somewhere in our Halloween stuff but for the life of me couldn't find it anywhere on Sunday afternoon. So, Brent said he'd wear my old witch outfit and I ran out to the Family Dollar and found some green face paint for him. He was a huge hit around the neighborhood.
We met Lilli's little friend Liam at a church in our neighborhood having a fall festival. Our church had had its festival the Wed before and had canceled all services for the night, so we had figured we would check this place out. Really it was just a few Trunk or Treat cars giving out candy. But she was SUPER excited to see her friend! They are so funny together.
Lilli wouldn't keep her hat on for even a second and was trying to convince Liam to take his off. But he would cry anytime his hat came off. Too funny!
She kept going back to this lady and getting Twizzlers.
The Cowardly Lion
Best Buds
Two kids wondering why in the world their parents do this to them...

They found a cat hanging in the tree (have no clue why....) so they stood there for a while beating it and playing with and just cackling.
After we were there a little while we went our separate ways and since it was nearly dusk we decided to start trick or treating. We just went all the way down our street from 12th to 17th. This was her first house to trick or treat at!
She really got the hang of it quickly, especially when all the other kids really started pouring out. She would run up to each house saying Trick!Treat! and was even pretty good about saying Thank You.
Being so little and funny she got lots of extra candy versus some of the rude ones who would cut in front of us or push their way to the front of the lines. A few houses even gave out little toys, and if people had a dog she would just go crazy. One person gave her ribbon, which was really strange. Our next door neighbors bought her cupcakes and cookies.
We got back to our house around 7 and got Pippin in his Tin Man outfit. We just spray-painted an old fire hydrant costume silver and it worked pretty good. As always, more people asked if they could take pictures of him than anything else! We only gave out candy for 30 minutes since she and Pippin were starving for dinner and with it being a school night we didn't want her up late. We still went through about 4 or 5 bags of candy in that time. Our street and neighborhood are just nuts on Halloween. We usually get at least 250 people, and are considered the 3rd most popular street in the neighborhood. The most popular street literally gets about 1,000 trick r treaters, about 5 blocks over. Our neighborhood is always on the news on Halloween night, and a couple of the streets were actually blocked off by police for safety. It's quite the spectacle and next year we'll probably head over to those streets as well. It took us 1.5 hours just to get 5 blocks in!
Here's my Halloween table for this year, I also had flowers but they were droopy by the time I took pictures. The plates and runner are Pottery Barn Kids.
I did some garland and things on bookshelves and fireplaces.
And I thought the bag I had made for Lilli turned out so cute! I think the witches hat will work well every Halloween with whatever she's dressed as. And it's a nice collapsible bag so storage will also be easy.
And that was our Halloween 2010! Already time to start thinking about costumes for next year!

Halloween Dressy

I had completely not realized that Halloween was on a Sunday (not really anyway) until just a few days before the holiday. If I had thought about it I would've bought her a cute little dress off Etsy or somewhere, but instead we just worked with what we had.I paired her little pumpkin patch shirt from Gymboree with a black skirt that is sized 12M that was too big for her last year, and then picked up some orange tights at Gymboree the night before. Of course she managed to get a run in them that morning, but this is actually the first pair of tights she's ruined so far. I was thinking that's pretty good until I realized this is REALLY the first winter she's just been crazy all over the place. She started walking almost a year ago, but by comparison last winter she was much tamer than now! We'll probably ruin a lot of tights this year. (And actually as much as I like Gymboree stuff Old Navy tights are really a lot sturdier.)
The skirt was still too big this year!!! It twisted and turned around all morning but at least it didn't fall down. We had that problem a couple of times last winter with some skirts and it's always a little embarrassing to pick up your kid and have someone tell you her pants/skirt fell down all day, but it's a problem we have pretty often with Miss Skinny Britches.
We always do our grocery shopping after church on Sundays, and she found her bag of Halloween marshmallows when she was "helping" us put up groceries. It was either photograph her with marshmallows or photograph a crying kid. You can see which we chose.
She's been picking up big seed things from the cypress tree and storing them in her bug collector. Then when we go on walks she leaves them along the path for the squirrels. We also have to leave berries, other nuts and sticks for the squirrels. She's pretty concerned they have enough to eat this winter. She has also taken to spitting food out of her mouth and onto the dining room floor for Pippin. We wish she'd be more concerned about eating her own food, and thus not have pants that fall down so much. I have no idea what tore through my giant mum and has it looking so ghetto. My guess is one of the stray cats around.



Silly little girl!!
Goofing around on her tip-toes.
Sweet little feet in her orange tights!!!
And we called an end to the session when she started crawling around on the ground in her nice outfit. That skirt would probably be at least $40 retail (it's Janie and Jack) and the total Retail value of the entire outfit would prob be about $115 from shirt to skirt to tights and shoes. Of course I got it all on consignment/clearance/deals and didn't pay anywhere near that much, but of course I would like to re-sell it all! For sure not crawling around under the porch swing material!

Halloween Fall Festival

Last Wednesday night our church held its annual Fall Festival. We had already bought Lilli's lion costume (for her to be the Cowardly Lion) but were having no success getting her to wear it. I'm talking crying, laying on the ground, fits of kicking.Unless of course we held her upside down. Then it's all happy, happy, fun, fun. Of course you really can't hold a kid upside down for an entire evening.
So, on the way home from work Wednesday we stopped at the ghetto Rite-Aid in our neighborhood. I figured they'd have some semi-cheap outfits and I hit that nail on the head. Most of their Halloween stuff was already 50% off, and they had a wide array of 3 toddler girl costumes to choose from - an angel, bee or ladybug. I asked her which one she would wear and she said "No" so then I made her pick one and she picked ladybug. So for a whopping $7.50 investment I had a second costume for her this year. I thought since it was more dress-like she wouldn't mind as much. As if.
It was the wings and tu-tu that set her off. She just doesn't like dress up. So we let her cry it out in the floor for about 20 minutes while we finished getting cleaned up and once I pulled out a new book I had also bought at Rite Aid it was enough to get her past it and we were all fine.

Pretty much all the games and things are for older kids, so we just modified stuff so she could do it. If the object was to throw a ring on a pumpkin we'd just have her walk up and do it. Her hair is getting so long....in the back! That little curl stretches halfway down her back when it's wet in the tub!
They always have cotton candy and popcorn so we let her have some cotton candy. She LOVES it!
And wanted to share with me. When we got home that night I realized my arm was SUPER sticky.
Lilli's little friend Evelyn having some snacks....
She really liked the little "toss the ring on the spider" game. She was very meticulous about how she put the rings on the legs.
She was having such a great time!
They had a little bounce house and she and her little friend Haven had such a great time in there, they could have stayed in that bounce house forever.


Our night came to an abrupt end when after a REALLY long time we made her get out of the bounce house. She was pretty much madder than a wet hen, it was 15 minutes before her usual bedtime (8 pm) and she just wasn't going to get over the injustice of not being able to spend the rest of her life in the bounce house. We gave her a few opportunities to move on from the fit and when she wouldn't we left and came home. She definitely understands the options and choices we give her now, and when she just can't "recover" she understands the consequences so we are being as consistent as possible and sticking with the "punishment" - in this case quit your bellyaching or we're going home. So, we didn't quite make it to every center but it was getting late and a school night for her, so it's probably best.

After she went to bed I finished putting together the goody bags for her little classmates at daycare and the big pumpkin basket for her teacher. It's a lot easier to do stuff now that she's at an in-home daycare and just has a couple of other kiddos with her every day. The goody-bags consisted of some of the home-made sugar cookies we had made, some candy and Teddy Grahams, candy corn and Ghost shaped marshmallows.