Happy Halloween!

Graeme did not go as a chipmunk for Halloween, but tried to give his best impression of one while eating banana.

Speaking of bananas though, Graeme did go as a sock monkey. Here is the Sunday night trial run.

After the trial run came the Primrose School of Savage Halloween Day parade at Graeme's daycare.

We had Monday morning off, so we went to watch the parade. Graeme was happy to see Mommy.

Not so happy to see Daddy.

Graeme was happy to have a cookie (his new favorite) at Amber's office.

And here is our little monkey with his finished pumpkin.

Hope everyone had a happy and safe night of trick or treating!

Who Hates Iowa?

Graeme hates Iowa!

This last weeked we had Amber's cousin Trish, her husband Sean, and their daughter Patricia up for the Minnesota/Iowa football game.

It was a perfect chance to teach Graeme about rivalries - not that he really got it.

The weather was great for a late October game, and thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Woode, the parents were able to enjoy an afternoon tailgating.

Miraculously, the Gophers actually came away with a victory (only their second of the season), and we got to keep Floyd of Rosedale (the golden pig rivalry game statue).

This is not Floyd, just a random pig that was outside of the stadium.

This is also not Floyd, just Sims. Sometimes confused with a pig.

The kids got some quality play time in on Sunday before Patrica had to head home. He was a little confused as to why anyone would chose to wear purple and gold rather than green or maroon.

Halloween Preparations

Graeme is not allowed to play with knives yet according to Amber, so instead we had him paint his own pumpkin.

Here he is with his pumpkin taped up.

A little red here....

Maybe a little blue....

An eye patch like Sims....

A sneak peek at the "final" product.

We are literally waiting for the paint to dry (while we do other things). We'll have more pictures of the painted pumpkin, along with Graeme's costume soon. Maybe  next year we will get to play with those knives.

Ready for his closeup

My friend Kelly, designer and photog extraordinaire, was nice enough to make a visit to our house and take some one year photos of Graeme. These were a few of our favorites.














Here was our favorite of Mr. Sims too.

The Patch

You may remember our episode last year where we went to find pumpkins and instead of finding them at the orchard we planned on, we made a hurried purchase from the front lawn of a funeral home. Lets just say the creep factor was there, but the experience was not. We had better luck this year. A farm south of our house had a nice selection at cheap prices and a bunch of cute photo ops.




Graeme got to walk around a bit and tried his hand at corn hole.



Weighing some options



I think this is it!




Getting a ride in the wagon



It was too bright for him to look at the camera, but this was right before that cute little pumpkin was hurled of the wagon...



The final pics. I think we'll take that cute little boy in the vest too!



The wind was fierce but we got one more photo before we headed out.

Long days, long nights

It's not just our weekends that are busy. I won two tickets, through my employer, to the MN Wild hockey game vs. Edmonton last Thursday. we sat in the 9th row and the Wild brought it with a shoot out victory. We also had a celebrity sighting. Wee Man from the Jackass franchise was sitting in a suite in the level above our seats. Not an A-lister by any means, but we'll rake what we can get!

Milestones at one year

Graeme has been busy and passed several milestones over the last month.

Walk like a man
He has chosen walking as his new and preferred method of transport.










Sign me up
Graeme has learned some sign language at school that we are attempting to reinforce at home. He can say: all done, more and nap. We also think he says blanket, but never in the right context...

Talk to me
Graeme is constantly working on his vocabulary. Right now he has a handful of words that he says: da-da, all done, no, dance, what's that and has creative pronunciations of 'cookie' and 'thank you'. He also has another set of words for various objects that all sound like ba-ba.

Tell me the tooth
For awhile we thought Graeme wasn't going to EVER have teeth. This week he proved our theory wrong. This picture isn't great but you can see the shiny white slit of a tooth coming in!









School Daze
Effective the end of this month Graeme will be the newest Young Toddler at Primrose School. He's doing great and loves going everyday.

Pain in the 'ear'
In his quest to be an overachiever, in addition to all of this learning, Graeme is still battling seemingly endless double ear infections. Ever the optimists, we hoped he would grow out of it. It's looking like he won't and headed into prime Ear infection season, we are going to be consulting an specialist and talk about tubes.

Cheers
After a couple weeks of trying Graeme on a sippy cup with negative results, he decided this weekend that it wasn't so bad.






With all of this, Graeme continues to be a happy, fun-loving, mild-mannered little guy. He makes is laugh everyday and we love having him around.

Will travel for weddings

The first two weekends in October we attended out-of-town weddings. The first was my brother Ryan and Tommi's in Wisconsin. Matt and I were groomsman and bridesmaid, respectively. we had a great time and great weather for the outdoor ceremony and cocktail hour.











The second wedding belonged to Matt's cousin Jennie and her now husband Josh. We traveled to Sioux city Iowa this time and met up with Matt's mom and dad and extended family. Graeme had fun playing with the cousins his age.

Graeme sat through his first full length Catholic ceremony!









Graeme also had his first shower since our bathroom didn't have a tub. He didn't love it (note death grip on Matt's arm) but didn't protest either.

Yaaaaaay, gophers (not)

The tailgating season started on September 10 and although we feel we have improved our game and overall presence in the lot since last year, we're still waiting for the gophers to show up. They haven't had a home game since the middle of last month so we are looking forward to enjoy this fall weather when they are back at TCF stadium this weekend.

Fall festivities

Hey folks, remember us? Yeah, we're still here. We've been so busy since September 1st we haven't had time to update this blog which is a poor excuse, because matt and I both have mobile posting options...we're just not good at punctuality or consistency...no matter, we're back and here's what we've been up to.

Back at the beginning of September, before Graeme turned one, Matt and I along with Paul and Kendra spent an awesome week in the Los Angeles area taking in a variety (and a lot) of sporting events, sights and shoreline.

Dodger Stadium


Manhattan Beach


On our way to san diego. A spot just for us!



Qualcomm stadium





Angels stadium (Twins win!)


Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum


Our pics are strewn about over a couple of phones a camera and the Dodgers fan website...we'll update as we find them.