A Goofy Halloween

When I started asking Blake what he wanted to be for Halloween this year he told me "Super Goof".  There is an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse where Goofy dresses up as a superhero and his name is Super Goof.  Since most people don't know who Super Goof is and I didn't think it would be very easy to put together a Super Goof costume, we convinced Blake that being Goofy was just as fun as Super Goof .Once he saw the costume he was all for it.

We started out our Halloween fun with going to our ward's Trunk or Treat.  Blake loved it!  Eating hot dogs for dinner and then getting to go to each car and get candy is his idea of a perfect night.

Halloween night, we went to my parent's house for trick or treating with Blake's cousins. 

Blake was a little unsure of trick or treating this time.  We don't know if it was because it was dark outside or if the Halloween noises outside scared him, but for about the first 10-15 minutes Blake wanted nothing to do with trick or treating.  He kept saying he wanted to "go home" and insisted that we hold him.  We continued walking around the neighborhood while Carter, Clara, Zachary and Chase went up to all of the doors.  After a while,Blake must have decided that everything was okay, because all of a sudden he decided that he wanted to go to the door with his cousins.  When he came back from the door, he said, "This is fun! Let's go to another house. Let's go get more candy!"  Crazy kid.  Once he got over his fear, he had a really fun time trick or treating around Grandma and Grandpa's neighborhood.

Dallas Arboretum Pumpkins

It was the week before Halloween and I realized that I hadn't done anything "Halloween-ish" with Blake.  So, I called my friend in the ward who has a little boy that Blake loves to hang out with and we headed to the Dallas Arboretum to get in some pumpkin patch fun.  I love the Arboretum in the fall.  There are pumpkins everywhere!  It is definitely a yearly tradition type of place.  Blake had a lot of fun playing with the pumpkins and I got a lot of pumpkin pictures, so I felt a little better about Halloween sneaking up on me this year.

I love this picture because Blake completely posed for this picture all on his own.  He put his foot on the pumpkin, looked at me and started smiling. Easiest picture ever.

This is one of the many houses they have that is made out of pumpkins.  

 Blake really liked the bumpy pumpkins.  He thought they were pretty cool looking.

 Carrying pumpkins around is tough work.  You know he means business when the tongue is out. 

Blake and his good buddy Grant.

Texas State Fair

Where did October go?? I cannot believe that it is already gone and Thanksgiving is next week.  I am really behind on this blog, so I am trying hard to catch up with what we have been doing lately.  One of the things I really wanted to do again this year was go to the Texas State Fair.  I am not sure why, because I think I only went the state fair once the entire time I lived here growing up, but I think it is fun.  Blake actually liked  a lot more about the fair this year, except for Big Tex.  I tried to get a picture with Blake by Big Tex and Blake immediately started freaking out.  Then, Big Tex started talking and that just put Blake over the edge.  He wanted nothing to do with the fair after that and to this day if you ask him about the fair he will say, "Cowboy scary. Cowboy too loud." I am pretty sure if I was 2 1/2 years old and saw a 52 foot talking cowboy I would be scared too.

One of the things Blake liked last year at the fair that he really liked this year was the kids farm.  They give the kids little aprons to wear and you walk around a pretend farm and the kids get to do a bunch of farm activities like planting seeds, water the trees, milk the cows, feed the goats, etc.  Then at the end they give the kids money for all of their hard work on the farm and they get to go to their store and pick out a snack to use your money on.  It is really cute and Blake had a lot of fun with it.

We also checked out the petting zoo at the fair.  Blake was terrified of every single animal in there last year, so we weren't sure how he was going to do with it this year.  He was still scared of the large intimidating animals, like the camel and cows, but he really liked the rest.  I think his favorite part of the petting zoo was feeding the goats. He loved them!  He thought feeding them was super cool but he also kept trying to hug them through the gate.

Hugging the goats

After we scared Blake with Big Tex, he was completely done with the fair.  He just continued to say, "All done. I go home now." We made it up to him by taking him to the toy train display.  Once he saw the trains he immediately liked the fair again.  

 

'.

Utah Trip

We took a trip to Utah in September.  Eric and I had both wanted to visit Utah and Eric really wanted to go to a BYU football game so what better game to go to other than BYU vs. U of U?  Don't talk to Eric about the game though, it was a sad, sad night for him.  We met Eric's family in Utah and had a lot of fun catching up with  them and visiting some of our Utah friends. I had fun going to Quilted Bear and Robert's while Eric was at the football game. We also went to Bridal Veil Falls and Sundance while we were there and Blake discovered a new favorite activity..throwing rocks into the rivers. We let him throw a few off a bridge over the river and  we quickly created a new addiction. He could honestly do it for hours.  We loved our trip to Utah.  You forget how beautiful it is there until you go back.  

This is one of the bridges by Bridal Veil Falls that Blake was throwing rocks off of.  Lately, when we take Blake's picture, he says, "CHEESE!" really strenuously like it is this super hard thing to do or something.  So, sometimes we end up with facial expressions like this one in the picture.  We love him.

While we were at Bridal Veil, we tried to get a picture of all the Strong family cousins.  This is the best one I got.  It was incredibly hard getting this many kids to all sit, smile and look at the camera at the same time.

Throwing rocks at Bridal Veil.  We had to hold on to him because he was throwing the rocks with so much force that it was making him leap forward.  The worrier in me came out and I just imagined Blake unintentionally throwing himself into the icy cold waters of Bridal Veil Falls.

Throwing more rocks into the rivers at Sundance.

Happy Halloween

Summer Time In Texas

This summer was a complete beast.  We had the hottest summer Texas has ever had with over 70 days of 100 or higher temps.  To make it even more brutal, 40 of those 100+ degree days were in a row.  It was not fun at all.  Especially when all your 2 1/2 year old little boy wants to do is spend his entire day outside.  We spent lots of time playing inside and in the pool in order to survive. Here are a some pictures of what we did this summer.

Blake rediscovered his Halloween costume from last year.  He loves to put it on and fly like Buzz around our house.  

Blake built his very first train track all by himself.  He was so proud of it. 

We celebrated Father's Day with Dad and Grandpa

Blake dressed up in Mommy's shoes and Daddy's BYU clothes

The 4th of July was an especially brutal heat day.  We went to the Waxahachie parade with some good friends from our ward and by 10 AM  it was already close to 100 degrees.  We found some shade though and enjoyed another small town 4th of July parade. 

Blake and his buddy Grant

We had LOTS of pool time!  We have a community pool, but sometimes it is just easier to go swimming in your backyard so we got Blake a blow up pool and he loved it.

We signed Blake up for swimming lessons this summer too.  We did a parent/child class since he is under 3 and he had a lot of fun.  It was for an hour everyday (Monday-Friday) for 2 weeks and on the last day of class they let all of the kids in his class go down their big slide as often as they wanted.  Blake had been trying to escape from class the entire 2 weeks by running off to the slide, so he was beyond excited to actually get to go down it.  Unfortunately, since I was in the pool with Blake and Eric was at work during the lessons, we only got 1 picture of the swimming lessons and the rest was video.  When Blake got his completion certificate they also gave him a popsicle to eat.  He was definitely liking swimming lessons that day.  Going down slides and eating popsicles, what more could a 2 1/2 year old want?

When Blake and I were at Target one day, he saw a picture of a Lightning McQueen birthday party they had on display in their birthday party supplies section.  In the picture, the little boy had a Lightning McQueen birthday cake and from that day on that is all Blake talked about.  He calls Lightning McQueen "Cha-Chow" (because Lightning McQueen says, Ka-Chow in the movie), so all day everyday Blake asked us for a "Cha-Chow" cake.  Eric and I couldn't find a Lightning McQueen cake that wasn't crazy expensive, so we went to the store, got an non-decorated birthday cake, bought some Cars cars to put on top of the cake, and we made our own Lightning McQueen cake.  Blake was so happy to finally have his very own "Cha-Chow" cake, even though it wasn't his birthday.

"Helping" Mommy Bake Cookies

Building "Parking Lots".  I went into the toy room one day and Blake was building what he called a parking lot on top of the table.  This was the end result of this parking lot, but the beginning to many more parking lots in random places through out the house.  

We also had several trips to the Dallas Kids Aquarium with good friends and cousins.  Blake loves going and seeing all of the fish, sharks, and turtles.  He really likes seeing the alligators and feeding and touching the sting rays.

Touching the Sting Rays

 Can you see the sting ray sticking his head out of the water? And, no this is not Blake's new hair do.  The Sting Ray tank is outdoors so the wind was blowing his hair. 

 

Despite the heat, we had a great summer!  We survived the worst Texas summer and had a lot of fun while doing it.