halloween confusion for a 2 year old

Halloween seems to already be a bit overwhelming for booderbean. We went to our Church's Fall Festival last night and really had a lot of fun...though i'm not quite sure he got the concept of wearing a costume and trick-or-treating. Now he's only two, but i still thought he'd get all excited to get candy in his Elmo bucket. Yes...he has an Elmo Halloween bucket this year. It most definitely wasn't one of my favorite ideas for Halloween, and it most certainly doesn't' go with his monkey costume but...i need to pick my battles, and he does love Elmo so much :) We got the fabulous bucket about a month ago, and it's since become his favorite thing to put cars and tractors in to carry around the house. I'll admit, it is pretty darn cute.

OK, I've gotten side tracked here...

So anyway, we went to the Fall Festival at church. The overwhelming part was walking into the party and seeing the sea of kids, parents, games, food, ect. Kids running everywhere, parents trying to snap photos, music playing, candy throwing, LOUD! Booderbean stayed sandwiched between my legs for the first oooooooooh, hour! We tried the bean bag throw, no luck. We tried the basketball shoot, no luck. We tried the fish pond, no luck. Then we tried the cake walk...SUCCESS! Booderbean won the first round of cake walk (humm maybe a little help from the Deacon) and got to pick out any homemade goodie he wanted....he was in Heaven (pardon the pun here), he found a plate with a Halloween cupcake and an ELMO JUICE. and i say that in all caps because that's exactly what i heard, screaming excitement from booderbean when he saw and Elmo juice on the table. Don't' know what an Elmo juice is??? well it's our special treat at our house, simply it's a juice box with Elmo on the front. but you would think these things are plated in gold the way he gets excited over them! i love it, it's so cute how excited they get over little things!
So we were on a roll now, we went outside to the football shoot then we went to roast a marshmallow. Once outside, he was running all over the place excited! not sure if it was the sugar in him or what! Then it came time for Trunk-or Treating. To me this was kind of a mess and a little scary for the kiddos, but still, they had such a blast!
Booderbean isn't a big fan of sweets or candy or cake (hence why he didn't take a bite of his birthday cake!) so he didn't really care what was put in his bucket, he was just excited to be in on the action. It was hilarious to see him take out every piece and examine it then put it back in, he just wanted to see what was being put in his bag!

With all the confusion and chaos last night we didn't get many good photos at all, poor military man was trying so hard to get "the perfect shot" but it was just way too crowded to get them.

Tomorrow is his class's Halloween party and I'm so excited to go to his first school party! Trust me I'll go overboard with the photo taking. Then Friday night we'll be going trick-or-treating with some friends in town so I'm sure I'll get some good ones then. And I've already made it known that we'll be having a little photo session with my fall displays in front of our house. My poor boys, the put up with my constant photo attacks so well :)

happy Halloween everyone! more pics to follow next week!

my cowboy

To my cowboy:

I love you so much, thank you for everything you are to me and everything you have made me become. I am a better person because you are in my life and because you love me for me. Thank you for being an amazing daddy and an amazing husband.

Now i know you will most likely not be reading this because the blog just isn't "your thing", but on the off chance that you do, I thought that maybe you needed a reminder of how important you are to me.

I love this picture of us, it shows how much fun we have together
and how happy you truly make me.



Photo by: GreygillFish

phenomenal photography

I must brag...we recently had some fall photos taken of our family in honor of booderbeans 2nd birthday and they turned out GREAT! A wonderful photographer, awesome mommy, and new great friend took our photos. She did a great job and of course it was so hard to narrow down our favorites...we ended up with 13 "must haves". Here are just 3 of them, the rest will be posted to our shutterfly page, feel free to check them all out!

Thank you so much GreygillFish, we had a blast!

thanks for capturing my beautiful family, i love how you got military man watching his boy.

thanks for getting a great one of me and my baby, i love how he was holding my hands in the shot, i hope he never lets go!

thanks for capturing sweet booderbean kisses to daddy--he loves him so much

and thank you lastly so much, for capturing my 2 favorite booderbean faces! this boy melts my heart and cracks me up all at the same time!

booderbeans birthday PARTY

My baby boy is TWO!!! REALLY???

We had booderbeans 2nd birthday party at our house this past weekend! it was an overwhelming, chaotic, busy, FUN, exciting, mess of a party!! i don't know why i had in my mind that i would be able to sit back and relax and just hang out with my baby at his party...what was i thinking? The party was amazing though, we had so much fun, Coleman and his little friends and cousins had so much fun, the grandparents and aunts and uncles had so much fun...but man oh man, when everyone left and we looked around our house--we were just plum EXHAUSTED!

It was so great though to see him interacting more with the kids and to see him get excited about opening gifts..much more exciting for him than his 1st birthday party.

We had a tractor themed party, thanks to my fabulous friend and owner of KJane Designs, the invites turned out perfect and really set the mood for the party! I baked and decorated the tractor cake (i think i have really found myself a new hobby, it was so much fun!) with lots of help from military man! Funny thing though, booderbean never ate even one bit of his cake!! we even offered it again after dinner (hence the dirty face picture below) and let him blow out candles again, but nope..he didn't want cake! Grandpa Krout brought down the tractor and took kiddos (and us adults) on hay rides and we had yummy Carmel apples. I'm pretty sure booderbean received every tractor and every John Deere item that is made! This boy is set i tell ya :)

Here are a few of my favorite (and not so favorite b/c i made funny faces in all the pics for some reason!!) shots from the party. I'll be posting the rest to our shutterfly page so you can check them out there.

booderbeans birthDAY

So, booderbean turned 2 last Thursday and i am just now posting pics! the reason for my delayed blogging is LACK OF SLEEP!! this little 2 year old, turned 2 and apparently decided he didn't need to sleep in his own bed anymore!


readers...this will be another post, i'd rather focus right now on the birthday boy!


Military man and i snuck into booderbeans room the night before he turned 2 and covered his room in balloons (his favorite) and hung up Happy Birthday banners. He was so excited to wake up and see a room filled with balloons just for him! The minute i heard him waking up i grabbed the camera and headed in to get a wake up shot! He quickly wanted the "boons" in his bed with him. Military man had to work that day till 1pm so i made booderbean a yummy breakfast (which he proudly got to eat on his new Elmo plate) and we played till daddy got home. Then we woke booderbean up from his nap and headed to the zoo for the day!


We had decided to buy him his own bike and helmet (melmet as he referes to it) since he is just in love with the one at mimi and papas. Of course my camera battery died and i have no pictures of him seeing it for the first time!!!! He's still getting the hang of the whole bike thing so as he practices ill get some pictures up. It's hard livin in teh country with no sidewalks...i think we'll be laying some concrete in the near future :)



he kept saying "weeee" as he threw them!

this was birthday breakfast on Elmo plate

he got an Elmo tattoo and it pretty much made his day

right after i told him we were going to the zoo to see the monkeys! his and daddy's favorite.

silly monkey boy

who had more fun with the monkeys???

homemade?? not anymore!!!

What is our world coming to when a mother cannot bring her child's class homemade cookies anymore????


This is so upsetting to me. I was so excited for booderbean to be able to help mommy bake homemade cookies and ice them to bring to his little classmates today to celebrate his birthday tomorrow.


Little did i know that when i would ask if there were any food allergies i should know about, Miss Fer Fer (poor toddlers can't quite say Jennifer yet) would inform me that we are only allowed to bring store bought goodies! Apparently the government, or whoever made this decision for our school systems and child care centers, felt that some parents might try and poison their child's class so we can't bring them homemade anymore! Now I ask you, what parent would do that???


oh well...no point in stewing over this or gripping about this anymore (Lord knows i did enough last night!), it's a done deal.





So, booderbean and i went to the store and picked out some yummy cookies from the bakery for him to bring today! We did however go ahead and make those homemade cookies last night as well as some orange pumpkin ones.


I gotta say, this boy was so proud to pose for photos with his cookies! It's so cute how i can now say "ok, smile big for mommy" and he will do it willingly!

This ones for you Becky. I love how you love his little smile as much as i do!