Happy Halloween and Happy Birthday to Tristan!

I can't believe I have a one year old! This past year has been indescribable! It is truly amazing to think that just one year ago I had this tiny little boy that I had waited so long to hold. He's not so tiny now! At his one year check up he was in the 95th percentile for height at 31 1/4 inches (he's grown a full 10 inches since he was born). He's walking everywhere now, climbing on anything and getting into everything!

Since his birthday is Halloween I, of course, decided to have a costume party. The whole family were pirates.

Since we were pirates, I went with a pirate theme for the invites, pinata and cake. The invites were so much work but so worth it! Message in a bottle, I made all the "maps", filled the bottle with sand and mixed in jewels.I don't have pictures of the cake yet since my camera decided to die after one picture! We have a lot of video that I won't bore you with but fortunately, Ryan was there with his handy camera and he took pictures for me. THANK YOU RYAN!!!

I sent the kids on a treasure hunt around the house and front yard to find their goody bags filled with gold coin candy, ring pops, glow sticks and other treats. They all seemed to have a blast doing it! I also made a face cut-out poster that people could take pictures in. Here's the end of the treasure hunt... the dead pirate guarding his treasure. I made the Treasure Chest too. (Yes, I know I was a little out of control)The poster... I wish I'd done it on plywood instead of cardboard because it turned out so cute!

Our house was full to the brim with friends and family. We ate cake (which is a story in itself that I will share later when I have the photos), sugar cookies, opened LOTS of presents, broke open the pirate flag pinata and had a lot of fun. All in all, it was exhausting but so worth all the work! Fun but I'm not doing this again until he's five!

Tristan and all his loot. He loves all his new toys, especially the lion from his Aunt Jen, Uncle Brandon and cousins, Matthew and Tyler. When I brought it into the room his face lit up and his mouth opened as wide as can be! He kept going over and just patting it. So cute!

Mmmm Cake! His Pirate Hat Cake w/Green Frosting (another fiasco) as you can see he made a mess but only after I prompted him by pushing his hands into the cake. He was eating so daintly before I "helped".

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO CAME AND I HOPE YOU HAD FUN!

PUMPKINS

There is a great little pumpkin patch just down the road from us but Chad and I have never been until this year. We figured, since we have a Halloween baby, we should probably decorate. So we decorated the house and went and bought a bunch of pumpkins today.

Halloween Costume

In case you don't remember, Tristan was born on Halloween and because of that, he was dressed up in the nursery at the hospital before they brought him into me. He was a pirate then so we decided it would be a good costume for his 1st birthday as well. And look how adorable he is!!!!

Arrrggghhhhh Matey!

He looks so sad... but I LOVE this picture!

Tristan with his cousins, Matthew and Tyler

Happy Little Pirate!

October Fun

If you can't tell from my previous posts... it's been a busy month! Last weekend we went to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point with Ryan and Janelle. We rode a little train through the corn, slid down slides, went through the corn maze; oh, and froze our butts off!!! Haha it was cold and windy but we all had a lot of fun.

Cabella's

We had to take a trip to Cabella's the other day so Chad could get some things for the hunt. For those of you who've never been, it really is a cool store. They have a ton of stuffed animals as well as a huge fish tank. Tristan was having all sorts of fun running around and looking at the different animals.
I'm ready to go too Dad!

Chad and Tristan... smiling before the attack of the killer bear! ;)

He liked the deer the most. He stood here for a few minutes looking at them very closely. I told Chad I was going to teach Tristan to say, "No Daddy, don't kill BAMBI!!!" HAHA

The Little Gym

A friend recently told me about a place called the Little Gym and I decided to try it out with Tristan. It's an hour long class with kids his age and they do tumbling, hanging and different exercises. He had so much fun! I'm trying out another place this weekend so we'll see which one he likes better before deciding which one to take him to.

Playing with bubbles

So many things to play on/with and this is what fascinated him the most!

Learning how to hang on his own. He loved the teacher... even went and sat in her lap at the end of class!

Of course playing with the one girl in class.

No fear... he was off and running without me.

And the end result of all this fun? Asleep before we were even out of the parking lot!

Bike Trip

Chad had somewhere to be today so I thought I'd take Tristan on a bike ride. We rode from our neighborhood all the way to the Jordan River Parkway off of 9800 South and then took the parkway up to the play ground. Since it was past 5, we were the only ones there but it was fun just running around with him. He had his first experience on the slide and he loved it. He figured out really quickly that if I set him at the top of the slide, all he had to do was push forward a little and he'd go flying down... giggling and smiling the whole way!

Here he is at the top of the slide (I of course forgot the camera, so my phone had to do the trick... thank heavens for camera phones!)And at the bottom.And headed back to the slide as fast as his little legs could carry him.

He also discoverd that woodchips are fun to play with. Personally I'm not sure why cause they kept poking me so I'm sure they were poking him too, but he loved grabbing them by the handful and tossing them into the air.Examining the woodchipsI love this picture! He is so happy... you can just see the joy on his face!He thought it was great fun to have me chase him through the grass. He would turn around and see where I was at and then turn around and run.Our new duck friend. This duck is quite funny. We've seen him on more than one occassion at the parkway. He has absolutely no fear of anyone. The last time I saw him, I was rollerblading and pushing Tristan in the jogging stroller; the duck was sitting in the middle of the path and just expected us to go around him... didn't even move a bit when we rode past him.

Tristan liked the duck and thought it was funny when I fed him some animal crackers. The dang thing about took my fingers off, he didn't even wait for me to toss the cracker, just jumped up and took it. He then followed me around begging for more. Smart duck!

Child Locks... Schmild Locks!

We were good parents and child proofed the house. Not anything over the top, just enough to keep him from hurting himself. That lasted about a month!!! He has no trouble pulling the electrical outlet covers out of the outlets and he's now figured out how the child locks work (as you can see in the video).

And now he's figured out how to take off his diaper. That was one I figured would happen... but so soon? Damn smart child!
Off with the diaper!Bum cleavage! Just can't resist!
I love this picture! But he suddenly looks like a little boy instead of a baby! Where has the last year gone? Oh and you can see he's actually getting some hair, light though it may be!

State Fair Fun

Chad always says that football and the State Fair really kick off fall for him so of course we had to go to the fair this year. I was mean and didn't want to go last year since I was fat, swollen and rather uncomfortable. But this year was much better and a lot of fun. We went with Jen and Brandon and the boys and Chad's brother Jeff and his wife Jen and Chad's BFF Jake. We ate, walked around and of course looked at all the animals. Tristan loved it! He was so excited when I let him walk around and pet some of the animals. We'll definitely be going again in future years.

Tristan trying to reach the goat but it was just not cooperating.

Another goat... this one was more friendly so I had to hold Tristan back or he probably would have tried to hug/wrestle him.

He's starting to learn to pet "softly" which was a good thing for this sheep. A month ago the poor thing would have had its ear pulled and probably been smacked on the head a few times.
Mama and baby piglets... so cute! Almost makes you want one, until you take a good look at their mama and realize that's what the babies will look like shortly!

My little cowboy and a demon cow!

WATERMELON!

One of Tristan's favorite things is watermelon as evidenced by the video below. I think he would be perfectly content to exist on a diet of watermelon, bananas and cheerios! He's also learned to clap and will do it at the most random times, especially if we say "Yay!". He thinks it is so much fun!

As I've said before, Tristan also LOVES bath time. I didn't really want to give him a full bath so I stuck him in the sick to hose him off and he thought that was the greatest thing ever!