Girls Date Night

This is my best friend, Lacey. She is actually a best friend to many. That is just how Lacey is. Her door is always open to everyone. She is always cheering people up, making them laugh, watching their kids or baking a treat. She is truly amazing. She is moving to Canada ver very soon and I will miss seeing her every day, but I know that we will be friends FORVER!

We see each other every day and we do lots of things together with our families, but we hardly ever hang out with just the two of us, so I decided to ask her out on a date. 

Here we are, ready for our date night.

We started out at Ringside. It was SO delicious. We hit up happy hour and sampled steak bites, bread basket, potato skins, caesar salad, calamari and virgin margaritas! So yummy! I highly recommend it to everyone. 

Now, it was time for the fun to begin, so of course, we headed to Wunderland. That is our local nickel arcade. I know that may sound silly to some of you, but we LOVED it!!! 

Here we are with our bags full of nickels ready to hit the slots, oh wait, I mean games!

Lacey was a big ball winner that night. You get a certain amount of tickets for the color of ball you get and the red balls are worth the most. She won like 8 balls!! 

Here we are a  gambling away and winning tickets galore. There were only a couple other people there (since it was 11:00 pm on a school night!) so we took lots of pictures and could play any games we wanted!

Here we are with our prizes. We got each of our boys a slinky, 4 little flashlights, 2 helicopters for Lacey's boys and a bag of tootsie rolls. 

It was definitely a night to remember! It was so fun to be out with Lace for one last date night!

Birthday Burger

I ate my favorite Bruschetta Chicken sandwich.

They sang to me and gave me balloons and ice cream.

 Miles "smiled" for a picture with his favorite Holly.

Luke smiled with his matching Daddy.

 Nate smiled because he is just so cute!

 Luke wanted some ice cream.

So, I gave it to him.

He liked it!

Then we all smiled!

The End!

Laughing at the Cousins

Here is a fun video of Lukey laughing at his cousins at Thanksgiving. 

Gingerbread Homes

 That's right folks! It's time to decorate some gingerbread. We couldn't do it without a little Nog!

 Miles is taste testing the gingerbread for us.

Luke is helping with the red and green frosting. 

There was some intense decorating going on.

 Happy Gingerbread families!! It was a little bittersweet because this is the last time we will be doing Gingerbread with the Poytress family because they move back to Canada in a couple weeks :(

Festival of Trees

 Today we headed out to the Festival of Trees with our Poytress brothers and Wagner girlfriends!

Here are the two cute baby boys!

 One Mama pushing the babies

One Mama holding the big boys hands

When we arrived we headed over to meet Santa Clause.

Here are our Poytress brothers with Santa. SO CUTE!

Next, it was Lukey's turn. I thought he would for sure cry because babies usually cry on Santa's lap, right? Nope, Luke was just checking out his beard, glasses and hat and he hammed it up for the camera. I almost got a little teary eyed seeing my baby meet Santa for the first time. He is such a cutie and this Santa was so adorable with his real beard! 

Now it was onto the teddy bear hospital where you get to name your bear and get him bandaged up, get his vaccines, sutures and a diaper. It was fun to actually have a kid to get the bear this year instead of just enjoying everyone else's children. I'm sure Luke will enjoy chewing on his bear. 

Here is Luke and Brownie (yes, I know it is such an original name)

Luke skipped the cookies. He is more into green beans and mum mums, but Miles enjoyed his cookie.

Lukey and Naters with their bears. 

 Here are all of our friends with their teddy bears! Erika, Megan, AJ, Luke and Nate!

AJ, Miles and Lace checking out the trains. 

This was the cutest tree display I have ever seen! I've been going to Festival of Trees my whole life and I just couldn't get over how awesome this tree was!!

Oh, and here is Lacey wearing a newborn diaper over her face....don't ask!!

We had such a fun day with the Poytress boys and Wagner girls! I can't wait until next year!!!

Seven Months

Height 28.5 inches (93rd percentile)

Wight 20 pounds (80th percentile)

Head 18.25 inches (96th percentile)

At seven months Luke is such a big boy!! As you can see from the stats above he is growing like a weed and has a huge head! (Those tend to run in my family) Depending on the brand of clothes he is wearing 6-12 months, 9 months or even a few 12 months. His hat size is 12-24 month and he is wearing size 3 diapers. 

He is sitting up on his own, but still tumbles over frequently. If I sit him up on a blanket with some toys and leave the room for a minute I often come back to see him fallen over, but he usually doesn't even care. He still hates to be on his tummy and last night was really the first time he has rolled from his back to his tummy by himself. He loves to stand and jump. He enjoys playing in his jumperoo and exersaucer. He is always twirling his wrists in the air and checking out his hands. He puts EVERYTHING in his mouth and wants to grab at everything he sees. Yesterday I was eating a slice of pizza and he grabbed a big handful of sauce and cheese! 

He (obviously) loves to eat! He is still exclusively nursing (refuses the bottle) 4 times a day and eats baby food three times a day. He eats: rice cereal, pears, peas, green beans, bananas, sweet potatoes, squash, peaches and later this week I plan on introducing carrots. He is a really good eater and likes all of the foods. I was originally making my own baby food, but I couldn't get the things like peas and beans to be very smooth and he wasn't eating them well, so I switched to the jars and he loves everything. 

He loves to sit on the floor and play with toys. Some of his favorite toys are his wooden ABC blocks, a big red cup, foam letters and numbers, anything that lights up and is musical and pretty much anything he can get in his mouth. He always smiles when Daddy comes home and he loves to sing songs and play peek-a-boo with me. He loves to sit in the grocery cart and check out everything at the store. I enjoy it because people are always smiling at us and saying how cute he is! He is definitely getting better in the car, but still fusses sometimes. He is getting ready to move into the upright car seat and out of the infant carrier. 

He got his first two teeth at the beginning of October and I'm sure the will be more coming soon. He finally started sleeping 12 hours a few weeks ago and mommy and daddy LOVE it!! He goes to bed at about 8:30 PM and wakes up between 8:00 and 8:30 AM. He finally stopped getting up at 5 or 6 AM to eat and that makes for a nice full nights rest for me! He takes 2 or 3 naps during the day. His last nap is usually just 30-45 minutes and sometimes he doesn't need it. 

He is growling, babbling, giggling, laughing and makes all sorts of crazy sounds. He is the JOY of my life! I sometimes get frustrated when he doesn't take a good nap or if he is being super fussy, but mostly I just love  him to pieces. He is such a happy little guy and it is so nice to have my little buddy with me all the time. I am unable to do things sometimes because he is only nursing, but I really don't care. It is one year of my life that I get to be with my baby and if I have to miss a few outings, activities, etc. then so be it! There has only been one time that I was a little sad to miss something, but I know the time will come again when I will get time to do other things. This is the time for me to be with my precious baby boy and I love it. 

~Happy Halloween~

We always go to my sisters house for Halloween and have a yummy festive dinner and then head out for some trick-or-treating. This year was no exception. The Poytress clan made the trek out to Hillsboro to celebrate with us. 

We always do a dry ice drink and its fun for the kids (and grown ups) to watch the fog pour out of the bowl. 

Here are the kids...

Here are the grownups (minus Aaron who was helping Miles!)

Yes, Luke had 3 costumes! He had two from his cousin, but I thought they would be too small once Halloween arrived, but they weren't. So, in the morning he was a pirate then he was Harry Potter and then in the cold night air he was a froggy!

 The cousins!!

Dan's spooky pumpkin.

Uncle Dan and Lukey Potter.

Let the trick-or-treating begin!!! 

Here is our froggy trying to eat a tootsie roll. 

After an hour and a half we made it back home with all our loot!! Kids get such better candy these days. So many peanut butter cups, M&M's and snickers!! Not like when I was a kid. It was so fun to take Lukey up to the door and trick-or-treat with him. It was the best Halloween EVER!! I

I hope you all had a safe, fun and spooky Halloween!