Halloween Fun 2013

I loved Halloween as a kid. One of my favorite memories of Halloween growing up is dressing up and going trick or treating with the neighborhood kids. Our neighbors the May's would get there trailor and put haybales on it and we would ride from house to house trick or treating. I love, love, loved it and I have found myself the past two years while taking my own kid out missing that and wishing we could do that with him. I don't think it would really work out so well in the big city lol. As I grew older and got in my teens I lost the excitment for Halloween and didn't really get back into it until I started my own family. The only time I think I dressed up and got into it before having kids was while my hubby and I were dating. We dressed up as barbarians for a singles ward activity and we ended up winning best costume and got 2 free movie tickets. oh ya!!

I'd have to say that this year has by far been my favorite Halloween ever, and I'm sure it's just gonna get better and better from here on out. It's so much more fun when you have a kid old enough to understand what's going on and to see him having a blast. Every year we decide to dress up as a family. It's pretty much our little family tradition we have started and I love it! Last year we were Betty, Barney and Bamm bamm from the flinstones. It was fun but the costumes were not warm enough so we were freezing our butts off.

This year we decided to be Gru, lucy and Rome was a minion from the Despicable Me 2 Movie! We got so many compliments on our costumes and Rome was sooo adorable.

The night before Halloween at the ward trunk or treat

Haloween night strolling with my lil dude

Cutest Minions around. Rome with his younger cousin Jandro. We had a few people ask us if they were twins hehe

 

Rome with his buddy Jackson

It was so fun watching them trick or treat

After we were done trick or treating we got to go to gma and gpa strattons house and have pizza and play. Rome adores them and was so excited to see them, he didn't want to leave!

 

 

Here's some pics from earlier in the week!

Carved pumpkins..... they died 2 days later boo

Went to the pumpkin patch again with our good friends the Gullicksons

Riding the train with Cody

hahaha I seriously laughed so hard looking at the pics from the blowup slide.

Sierra and Camden ran into us. Oh gosh we were laughing so hard.

 

I love this little girl she is such a sweetie! I get to snuggle her every week when we do our play dates at the park and storytime and get my baby fix in. Oh, I so hope my next one is as sweet as her. She is such a good baby and so adorable. We went to dinner after the pumpkin patch and I'm pretty sure I starred at her the whole time. Can you blame me???

 

This month treated me good! Iv'e been feeling better and have been more positive and have been keeping busy with lots of family, friends and fun activities! I love the holidays and can't wait for some fun family stuff coming up! Lately, more than ever I've been noticing all the good people we have around us. I'm so greatful for the friendships we have developed and the strong bonds we have with family members! Bring on all the holiday fun!!

 

 

Bam!! Rome is potty trained

I was dreading the whole potty training thing with Rome. Every mother I talked to said they hate the potty training phase and how horrible it is. But can I just say that it was sooooo easy. Maybe because I didn't try to force Rome to do it before he was ready. I talked to a lady I met in Rome's Little kickers (soccer) classes at the park about what she did with her daughter and her advice worked out perfectly. We just went and bought Rome some big boy undies and just went for it. Got him up one morning and put the undies on him and went and showed him his potty and told him he needed to go in his potty and not in his big boy undies. At first we tried putting him in front of the T.V. sitting on his potty and it didn't really work out to well. He never went to the bathroom on his potty.

We figured he wanted privacy, so we put the potty in the bathroom and viola, we were right, he finally went pee pee! We jumped up and down and clapped our hands like a bunch of crazy people. You would have thought he just won the super bowl or something haha! We rewarded him with a few chocolate chips. He only had 2 accidents the entire week. We had to take a week break and go back to diapers cuz romanian got sick and wasn't cooperating and well I didn't want to fuss with it while he was sick and miserable.

The next week when Rome was feeling better we were back in the game and he did so good. He went poo in the potty like a champ. Whenever he would start whining for his diaper I knew it was because he had to go number 2, so I would just keep incouraging him to go in his potty and that he didn't need his diaper to go potty anymore! It's been so easy and he has had very little accidents. He just goes in and goes potty without me reminding him or helping him. He even dumps it in the big toilet and flushes all by himself. The only thing we need to work on is getting him to put his clothes back on after he goes haha. Poor sister missionaries were over and got flashed a few times because he would run out butt naked yelling, "I did it, I did it guys."

 

I love having Rome potty trained, it is the best thing. The older he gets the less stuff I have to pack every time we go somewhere. Now when we go to the store I just have to pack a drink, snacks, and sometimes ill bring extra pants and undies just in case we have an accident (haven't had one yet :) ). Hopefully I didn't just jinx us lol.  I have learned that potty training really isn't all that bad and I'm so so very glad were done with it.