October - Halloween

We dressed up and attended 3 different Halloween events this year: Boo Bash, church Trunk or Treat, and Dexcom's Halloween office party. Somehow I only managed to get pictures at Boo Bash, so here's what I got!

For his first Halloween, Briggen dressed as a caterpillar. Thanks to our family friends, the Gillespies, we had a caterpillar hand-me-down costume. Since he was a caterpillar, I was on the search for another bug costume. I found some ladybug wings at the dollar store for myself, but were still undecided for Brodie. He thought about dressing as a gardener, but his outfit looked more like a farmer. That's when we decided to go with an Eric Carle theme, and dress as characters from his books: The Hungry Caterpillar, The Grouchy Ladybug, and Around the Farm. 

Boo Bash is a Camas downtown event where businesses open their shops to Trick-or-Treaters and hand out candy. Brodie's chiropractic office participated, so we started out at Columbia Chiropractor and handed out candy. There were so many trick-or-treaters we ran out of candy within the first hour of the event!

crawling around the office

handing out candy 

After we ran out of candy, we did some trick-or-treating for ourselves. Briggen was just old enough to hold his own bag, but it's pretty obvious the candy isn't for him. We felt a little weird getting candy for ourselves, but Briggen loved it, and it's hard for me to say no to free candy :)

Briggen: 8 months

the sequence of events that took place to capture the one semi-decent photo above :) 

Now: crawling, sleeping in a lower crib mattress, waving hello

Loves: swings & smoothies 

Dislikes: people walking by without waving hello

Teeth: top 2 teeth have broken through!

swinging at the park

hanging with the Gillespies

we now find him standing up in his crib and grabbing things off the shelf

(his mattress was lowered just after this picture was taken haha)

playing with his friend, Laykin

October - Pumpkin Patch

Previous years we have picked out our pumpkin at the Safeway "pumpkin Patch". This year, we did the real deal! We haven't been to a real pumpkin patch since moving to Camas, so we weren't sure which one would be the best one. We chose one out in Fern Prairie and hoped for the best. It turned out great! Minus the fact that we didn't actually buy a pumpkin :) 

photo fun - I love Briggen's expression in this one

corn maze - can you tell Briggen loved it??

out in the pumpkin patch

pretty horse pasture nearby

fuzzy caterpillars

very pretty pumpkin patch with pumpkins in the trees 

on the way out we saw this scale for weighing pumpkins and put Briggen on it. 

"I weigh that much?!?"

and a nap after all the pumpkin craziness :)

October - Portland Zoo

Now that we have a little one, we are looking for ways to get out of the house and explore "fun kid places". I bought a membership to Oregon zoo this year, which was actually a pretty good deal! I only needed a membership for myself because each membership comes with a free guest (Brodie). And Briggen is under 2, so he gets in free as well! 

Every other Wednesday I have work off. Wednesday is a half day for students at school, so rather than splitting a half day in half, my co-teacher and I decided to switch off Wednesdays. Which is more than perfect because Brodie doesn't have work on Wednesdays either. So we spent a sunny Wednesday morning at the zoo! 

staring contest with the gorilla

his all-time favorite spot to sit

waving hello

in the bird menagerie

checking out the black bears

It was a fun, not crowded day at the zoo!

 

October - Beach Weekend

The first weekend in October was General Conference! I love fall General Conference. It's such a wonderful weekend to take a break from the busyness of school and to spend time relaxing and filling our spiritual canteens. This year we decided to head to the beach and invited some friends along with us (although they never made it into any of the pictures haha). 

morning nap

down at the beach in between sessions

the dogs LOVE the beach

walking on the boardwalk at sunset 

Briggen loved to cuddle up to Brodie 

 

 and then snuggling with me in his pouch while I cleaned up the beach house

It was a quick, but fun getaway. See you again soon, Little Gem!