Halloween Baby Progressive Dinner

What an 8 months it's been since Hannah was born! In the past 8 months Hannah, Rob and I have been lucky enough to meet sooo many new friends with babies right around Hannah's age. A part of me was really afraid that once she was born our social life would be dead...or at least on life support for a while...but I was wrong and we are having soo much fun every day with all of our new baby friends.

This weekend we had the first (annual- hopefully!) Halloween progressive dinner. There are 4 of us who live within one block of each other, so we were the 4 stops on the progressive dinner stop. Along for the ride were 28 adults and 14 (I think?) babies all under a year. We packed up our little aerobics instructor and headed to the first stop.

The first stop served butternut squash soup & a fall salad with homemade croutons (that I basically ate by the fistful) - and had these ridiculously cute halloween baby favors:

Some of the parents got in on the costume action too!

Oh and did I mention we wheeled pumpkin and Oktoberfest beer from house to house via "beerbarrow"?

beerbarrow at your service

The next house (directly across the street) served pumpkin risotto, smoked short ribs and a table of cheese, meats and other snacks...

Along with delicious fall punch

I have decided that more drinks need cranberries floating in them.

One street over the next stop was our house where we served Puff pastry with sopressata and cheese, butternut squash and goat cheese dip and a baked brie with apples....  this is the only pic of course I took of our spread, before anything even came out of the oven. whoops.

Parents most likely doing something embarrassing to make the babies look.

Before the dessert stop,  we had to take some pictures obviously... a few of the babies and grown ups had already left for early bedtimes by now....but here is a sampling of the cuteness...

Soooo ridiculously thankful that I have these ladies in my life!

Daddies and babies...is there anything cuter?... oh yeah, daddies and babies in halloween costumes.

We enjoyed a sampling of fall desserts and hot (spiked) cider....

And headed back across the street to put our little pumpkin to bed...who was exhausted and slept in nice and late the next morning....

Such a fun day!!

And for your viewing pleasure one more pic of Hannah in her costume :)

Not amused

Happy Halloween!!!!

Halloween Costumes - a trip down memory lane

I thought it would be fun to do a little look back on all the random Halloween costumes I've documented since starting this blog...

Let's start with Halloween 2008 when I had two costumes...
The first night Rob and I were Juno and Bleeker...remember that movie? So good...anyway, that's what we went to our first party as.

I had a great time holding drinking beer and dancing like a maniac while looking a million months pregnant, but also didn't try on the belly before buying and am pretty sure I got one that was supposed to go under like a massive santa costume or something so I didn't really want to wear it again the next night...so poor Rob rocked those killer shorts two nights in a row while I pulled together a cowgirl outfit from things in my wardrobe for the next night.. haha

Sidenote- my sister (the lion) is a wiz at pulling together awesome halloween costumes from stuff she already owns.... 

Halloween 2009 was awesome and Rob and I rocked publisher's clearing house winners costumes. After the party I kept trying to buy drinks at the bar with that check, but apparently Habits doesn't take novelty sized checks. Lame.

Emily again pulled off the magic with crap from my parent's basement including the daisy hat that we both had after going to Disney world in like 1990.

Halloween 2010 I was Flo from the Progressive commercials... I got to wear a bumpit in my hair which pretty much made my Halloween.

and Maggie had fun dressing up as her arch nemesis...

fun is in the eye of the beholder

2011 I dressed up with some co-workers in some rockin' 80s gear

And Maggie stuck with her building tradition of dressing like her multiple enemies.

This year I have a new little someone special to embarrass dress up at Halloween so let the fun begin! 

Pumpkin Patchin' 2013

Two weekends ago we did our yearly trip to the pumpkin patch.  I wanted to try something different out and got some good suggestions on facebook, but when Hannah decided to take a marathon nap that day and slept way later than usual, we decided to go somewhere a little closer to home.... and went with Burger Farms. If I'm being honest, I don't recommend this pumpkin patch. There are so many others that are just sooo soo much better. This one had rides you would find at a festival and carnival games...and lots of odd things that were just not what I think of when I want to go to a pumpkin patch. All I really wanted though was to take a hayride to a pumpkin patch and pick out some pumpkins, but that was even pretty bad.....we took a hayride through the parking lot and a bunch of dump trucks and muddy holes to a tiny strip of grass with a bunch of pumpkins dumped in a pile...

Last year at blooms and berries we took a fun hayride through haunted woods to a big patch of pumpkins spread out everywhere.... There are a lot of great pumpkin festivals in this city...this is not one of them..... I want a corn maze and caramel apples and hot apple cider and silly cutouts to make you look like a scarecrow.... but anyway....

That being said, we managed to get some great pictures so that made me happy.

We jumped on the magical hayride...

To the pumpkin patch!

Hannah had a great time climbing all over them and checking them out...

It was a gorgeous fall day....

We picked out a couple of small pumpkins and had a little fun while waiting for our hayride to pick us back up...

Happy Fall!

8 Months

I realized with all that's been going on that I forgot to do an 8 month update...
So here is one for all you Hannah lovers out there :)

This lil lady is 8 months old!

She is on the move and I spent the majority of this "photoshoot" keeping her from crawling off of the chair.

She is still super happy all the time...and has learned fun games like peek a boo

She gives this fake "shy" look to strangers when they say hi to her in public... :)

She can be dramatic at times

will this photo shoot ever end??

and still LOVES watching whatever Maggie does

She gets more fun every single day

Happy 8 months Hannah!!!

The Sunflower Festival

Sorry I've been MIA for a while... we have been very busy (more on that a different day!)...but anyway.. a couple of weeks ago we headed out to Reading for the Gorman Heritage Farm Sunflower Festival.

From the Gorman Farms website:
Gorman Heritage Farm is a 122-acre working farm and outdoor education center, which invites its visitors to explore and learn the history, methods and values of a working family farm in a natural setting. 

We went with some friends to enjoy a fall day at the farm and to hopefully get some good sunflower pictures. Unfortunately the rain came a day earlier than it was supposed to... but fortunately we got some wholesome family fun in before the rain got too bad...

After checking out some cute things that the farm had going on, we hopped on Hannah's first hayride and headed up to the sunflower patch!

SO pretty, right?..sunflowers everywhere! You could also grab some shears and cut them and take them home for 50 cents a stem... We took home a big bouquet of them..

And of course we had to take advantage and get some cute shots of our little sunflower

See that dead flower to the right of her? I took about 500000 pictures of her sitting in this spot and that dead flower is in every.single.one. #sunflowerfestivalfail

Dead flower aside, we got some pretty cute pics.

I absolutely adore this sweet little family of mine :)

Then we kept walking and came across a little petting zoo..Hannah got to met some interesting animals.

um... I am pretty sure that is not maggie.

This is the point where it started to rain, so we had to end our farm adventure a little early...but not before the obligatory making babies stick their heads in wooden cutouts picture.

Hannah & Dad

And another with her main squeeze Gavin.

I'm excited to take her back when she's a little older and can understand some of the lessons they have there about where food comes from and all that. It was a great fall day!