Fall and Halloween galore! Pumpkins farms, Halloween celebrations, costumes…October was full of all that.

Nathan’s school went on a field trip to a pumpkin farm. Here he is with two best buds, Phoenix and Caitlin. (Gary and I didn’t go, but one of the other parents snapped this for us)

Then we took our annual trip to Webers Farm.

He was mining for gemstones here

Hayride!

On the front steps of our new house

Nathan trying on his Woody Halloween costume for the first time. He was SO excited about it. We ended up with Woody two costumes and he actually wore a different one for trick-or-treating.

Here we are at a different pumpkin farm, on their hayride. If I’m remembering correctly, Nathan took this photo, and I love it!

This pumpkin farm had a couple corn mazes and a big pumpkin patch that you could walk through.

We painted pumpkins for Halloween. The paint pretty much all peeled off once it dried, but it was a fun project anyway!

Here’s me at 33 weeks pregnant. By this point I was getting lots of comments from people I didnt know about how big I was. and amazement that I wasn’t due for another 7 weeks. Gotta love random stranger comments like that…

Toward the end of October a friend of mine gave us tickets she had won to see Toy Story on Ice. We took Nathan’s friend Phoenix, another hard core Toy Story fan, and they had a blast.

We also did our annual trip to Zoo Boo which we’ve been doing since Nathan’s first Halloween, but that will be a separate post because there are already too many pictures in this one!

And what October is really about…Halloween! We loved walking through our new neighborhood with all the other families and young kids. Nathan was a little shy about going door to door, but was doing well until about 3/4 through when one of the houses had dry ice at the door and he got a little scared. We did a few more houses after that, but he was telling us he had enough candy and was ready to go home

Checking out the loot.

More pictures from October here

Lots of fun with friends in August…

We went to on a Pirate Ship adventure in downtown Baltimore. It was lots of fun, and we hope to do it again this summer.

Enjoyed a birthday party at Clark’s Elioak Farm

(on a hayride)

And met a friend and her daughter at the beautiful Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.

(Caterpillar in the treehouse)

(Show me if you can curl your tongues!)

(Same fountain, same friend, almost two years later. Other picture is from November 2008)

(Same fountain, almost two years later. Other picture is from November 2008)

This photo of Nathan from August makes me think of my Dad. We were on the little playground near our house.

I had to get this picture since I knew we’d be moving soon and it’s Nathan’s first house!

And I was finally able to get Nathan to let me take pictures of him in his “Big Bro to be” shirt. Yay!

For some reason he insisted on holding up this (totally awesome) book that Uncle Ethan gave him.

We also took some of the first belly pictures of this pregnancy. I was 26 weeks.

More pictures from August here

In July we took a trip to Ocean City, MD with Gary’s parents. As usual, the trip was packed full of activities…beach, water park, mini-golf, the boardwalk carnival, and of course feeding ducks in the canal.

(You can always count on Oma for M&Ms on the beach!)

(I think maybe he’s explaining how to mini-golf to Ava?)

Family Picture time!

More pictures from our trip here

Summer is always super busy…day trips, birthday parties, time outside…here’s our June in pictures..

Birthday party

Trip to the National Zoo in DC with friends

A neighborhood carnival

Pool time at home

(Water gun fight!)

Roasted marshmallows on the deck

Nathan’s first movie in the theater (Toy Story 3!). He loved it and we can’t wait to take him again.

Nathan gathered all his stuffed dogs for Fenny and laid them out around him.

More pictures from June here

I’m going to try to do one post per month until I get more caught up. So here is how we spent last May…

More time outside. Yay!

(There were dolphins in here)

And on a tour of a submarine at the harbor (I think Nathan enjoyed this more than the aquarium)

Later in the month we took a trip with friends to Dutch Wonderland

(I think this was his first real roller coaster)

And a trip to the Maryland Zoo

And more time outside as it got even warmer…

More May 2010 Pictures here

I was going to stop updating the site, but it just seems like such a great way to chronicle our kids lives, so I’m going to start updating again. First things first, I need to catch-up to where we are now, so here’s the first of a few posts to get us there…

Last April, besides Nathan turning 3 (!), he learned to ride his tricycle all by himself. We spent a lot of the Spring peddling around the neighborhood and up to the playground.

Nathan loved collecting things in his bike basket.

We enjoyed a trip to the circus this month, and Nathan has had more and more fun playing with this cousins.

The highlight of the month was, of course, Nathan’s Birthday. The big 3! We had family in town to celebrate for his party.

The party was at a firestation, where the kids got a lesson from a firefighter and then a ride in the firetruck! I think it was a hit.

We celebrated his actual birthday at home with hot dog octopus and an ice cream cake.

And that was April! More pictures here and here

More to come…I promise this time!

Obviously I’m very behind on updating the site. Life just gets busy I guess!

In March we had fun jumping in the puddles around our neighborhood.

Nathan showed me his grumpy and happy and excited faces.

And we went to a really fun birthday party on The Mall in DC for the Kite Festival. Nathan took his first metro/subway ride and flew his first kite, and we had a great time.

April updates to come soon…

Nathan loves pulling up a chair or stool in the kitchen when we’re cooking (which I will fully admit is mostly Gary!)

He likes to watch, help, ask questions and provide commentary.

He’s helped Gary make Challah a bunch of times and I love the idea that it might be something he can grow up doing with his dad. It’s nice that he takes an interest in helping cook. He’s curious about it, and he wants to be where we are and do what we’re doing.

A belated Christmas post…this is always a fun holiday, with lots of time spent with Gary’s family, and lots of food. It starts with Christmas Eve at Gary’s Grandmother’s.

Here’s Nathan getting ready.

Playing with Opa after dinner.

Gary and I managed to get a nice picture of just the two of us. This might be the first one since Nathan was born!

Christmas morning is spent with Oma, Opa, Aunt Julie, Uncle Jason, Jake & Ben. After coffee and opening presents, we have breakfast. It might be one of my favorite meals, partly because its a warm and happy morning and partly because it includes a contest to see who can eat the most. I think Opa took it this year.

Nathan broke into the candy cans before we even started on the presents. Eh, what’re you gonna do, it’s part of the holiday!

Oma has jingle bells, and Nathan made sure we all had them.

Nathan playing with one of his favorite new toys.

We got some cute pictures of the cousins this year. Nathan really loves them and it’s awesome to see them playing together. Jacob is especially good with Nathan and has a lot of patience.

Family portrait.

There aren’t any pictures from Christmas Day Eve because about an hour in to the family party the day caught up with Nathan and all that junk food he’d eaten came back up. We made a quick exit because even though Nathan seemed to be feeling okay afterwards, he’d been sitting on Gary’s lap…so, yeah, you get the picture.

Hanukkah was fun this year. Nathan was of course excited about the presents, but the best part was that he was really excited to light candles every night too, and by the last couple nights he was singing the prayers with us too. We got him a wooden menorah with candles he could put in himself and he helped us light the menorahs too.

We had Latkes on the first night and he liked them a lot. Also liked dipping them in his applesauce.

Oma and Opa came over one night, and Grandma and Grandpa Bob came for the last two nights and stayed for a few days. I think Nathan had fun celebrating with them and I loved having them all be part of the holiday.

Nathan had fun helping Grandma bake cookies.

I’m glad that Nathan is getting old enough to start to understand things about the holiday. He loved reading Chanukkah books throughout the week and even still likes to now. And we got a Rugrats Chanukkah movie that Nathan loved and wanted to watch over and over. Lucky for us, it was surprisingly not bad!