Costumes and Such

Halloween is just around the corner and while it's not my absolute favorite holiday, it's definitely up there on the list. I'm not a fan of the creepy creepy aspect of the holiday, but I love the dressing up,  decorating, trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, and having pumpkin pie and my favorite...pumpkin chocolate chip cookies! yum!
Brady and I couldn't decide what to do for Halloween this year. I thought it would be fun to all dress up together. I was thinking Brady could be obi-wan, i'd be the princess chick, and emerson could be yoda, or we could do the Wizard of Oz with the tin man, dorothy, and the lion. Unfortunately, life has been insanely busy these last couple of months so I've had ZERO time to sew and I got the feeling Brady was less than thrilled with the idea. So instead, we're taking advantage of our little munchkins baldness and dressing him as Charlie Brown. 

I looked at costumes online but couldn't justify spending $25-$30 for a toddler's outfit for one night! So I got to looking around and found this yellow t-shirt and a pair of black shorts on clearance at Walmart for $2.50. I grabbed some black fabric for a whopping 74 cents, and some felt to make his snoopy bag for an additional 60 cents.

I am so glad my mom taught me how to sew when I was little.

Before:

After

Here's a close-up of his snoopy bag. I wanted it small enough he could carry it around by himself without it dragging on the ground. I love how it turned out :)

More pictures to come next week of him actually wearing it.
He's going to be the cutest little trick-or-treater!

On a more random note, I found these cute little animal pieces in a magazine. Stick em in some mini pumpkins and they make an adorable little centerpiece. Only problem is Emerson thinks they're toys and keeps scaling the table to play with them lol.

Hope you're all having a wonderful October!

Fall Family Fun

I love Fall. The changing leaves, the crisp cool air, all the family time and fun holidays. Yesterday, was the first day it actually felt like Fall though. The temperature finally dropped from the 100s to 68. It was fabulous. When Brady got home from work, we took Emerson in search of a pumpkin patch. I had my heart set on something like The Red Barn in Idaho Falls, but seeing as we live in Las Vegas, there were no such places to be found. We stopped by a carnival set up in the mall parking lot only to leave 3 minutes later when we realized Emerson was ONE inch too short for any of the rides and they would only let him ride the ferris wheel if Brady and I both rode with him for a grand total of $13...for a 90 second ride! I was feeling pretty discouraged, but then we happened upon this cute little place...Stu Miller's Pumpkin patch. It's no Red Barn, but it was pretty fun.

Riding the spinning bowls with daddy

He won this at one of the games...he was so excited!

Picking out a pumpkin

They had a super cute little petting zoo with sheep, goats, chickens, bunnies, & ducks. He loved the baby goats - they were just his size :)

All in all, it was a really fun day as a family, and a great way to celebrate the season.

Life on the Farm

On Saturday, Brady called me from work and asked if I wanted to go Utah for the weekend. Since it was Conference, he didn't have to be at meetings for church and he has Mondays off so it seemed like perfect timing. I hurried and cleaned the house and packed up the car and we left as soon as he got home.
My grandparents live in Hatch - this itty bitty blink and you miss it kind of town in southern Utah. Just outside of town, they've got a 100-acre farm & ranch complete with cows and yaks. They've recently started selling the yak meat and I've been in the process of making a nice little brochure for people that might be interested in buying it. Brady had been to the farm a couple of times, but we had always just gone up to the cabin and back and I wanted some pictures of the yaks for the brochure so we all hopped on an ATV and went exploring.

 

 He LOVED throwing rocks in the pond and watching them splash.

 Exploring the farm

Ringing the dinner bell with daddy

 

Walking through the hay fields to find Grandpa Riggs

Brady really wanted to take a boat out on the pond but I refused to try a canoe with Emerson so we rode a paddle boat but it didn't last very long. There was a leak in the bottom and then it started to rain. It was a fun 2 minute ride though.

 

Yakkety Yak

Peek-a-boo in the hay

Trying out Uncle Robert's Red Buggy

Coming home, the trees on Cedar Mountain were BEAUTIFUL.
We miss out on all the fabulous fall colors here in the desert.

 It was definitely a short trip, but lots of fun! Can't wait till we can go back. There's just something about slow-paced family-based life on the farm that is absolutely perfect :)

Our Little Monkey

I left Emerson playing with his toys on the floor in our room while I ran to the other room to grab something. Came back to find him sitting on the dresser eating Pretzels lol

 I asked him what he was doing and he just smiled and grabbed another one.

I don't know what we're going to do with this little monkey. My best guess is that he grabbed onto his crib and climbed up the side of it using the bars to make it to the top of the dresser, but I honestly have no clue how he got up there lol. little stinker.

Family Fun

About a month ago, Brady read online that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire would be auditioning in Vegas on the 29th. Since he loves trivia and it's always been his dream to be on a game show, he switched his day off with a co-worker and yesterday morning we headed into Vegas for the auditions. Emerson and I had planned on just roaming around while we waited for him to take the test but all the workers there with the show kept giving me stuff to test with and told me to take it anyway. I tried to use Emerson as an excuse, but they wouldn't have it. They were all playing with him and having fun so we got ushered into the ballroom along with everyone else. The test itself was only 10 minutes long and you had to answer 30 Multiple Choice questions. It wouldn't have been so bad except this crazy old lady in front of us kept turning around and glaring at us and then during the test she'd whirl around yell at Emerson "SHHH!" "Go to the back of the room!" Which would have been understandable if he had been talking, or crying, or singing, or banging on the table, or making noise...but he wasn't!!! He was being amazingly quiet and well behaved. The test proctors were in the back of the room laughing and joking, half of the old farts taking the test were coughing and hacking like they were about to lose a lung, but my sweet baby boy hardly made a sound! At one point she turned around were her pencil held like she was going to stab us...I seriously thought she might so I asked a proctor if we should leave and she just laughed and said no, stay put. So I did...for about 2 more minutes but then the crazy lady started shaking and glaring again, so I marked random answers as fast as i could just to finish and headed to the back of the room. lol

After the test, I apologized profusely to the lady next to me and she said "Seriously? He's the best baby ever. My kids would never sit that still. That lady's crazy." Everyone else thought so too cus they were all talking about the crazy lady yelling at the cute baby. :)

Long story short, we didn't pass but it was definitely an unforgettable experience. I didn't get any pictures of this part of the day, but we both got free Millionaire t-shirts, pencils, and magnets.

Afterward, we grabbed some breakfast and decided to head over to the Bellagio to check out the botanical gardens since we were so close.

There were dozens of hand-blown glass hot air balloons floating above us

the Aviary House

He was fascinated by the birdies

walking under the water tunnel with daddy

They had this cute little carousel on display that Emerson really liked so we decided to take him to the Mall just down the rode to ride a real carousel!

He was kind of unsure at first, but once it got going he loved it.

After the carousel we headed over to the Lied Children's Discovery Museum.

There was so much to look at and do, Emerson didn't know where to start.

He really loves tents...it took forever to get him to leave this and look at something else.

growing so fast! 32" tall!

You can't see it real well but he's inside a giant bubble :)

planting trees with daddy

roasting marshmallows with mommy

every few hours they do special activities for the kids. This was a science show where they made ice cream :)

This may have been Emerson's favorite part of the day...little guy has such a sweet tooth.

making music

We got in the car to drive home...it was raining and 119 degrees outside. I'm starting to miss Idaho lol.

We had so much fun today. Best part was that our sweet little guy was so worn out he took a good long nap when we got home, which meant we got a good nap too :)