Party Time!

Last weekend we celebrated Cali's 1st birthday!

My sister planned a wonderful circus themed party with a circus tent, dress up station, popcorn, balloons, and treats. 

This clown had a great time!

And, he had fun playing with another clown, Grandma!

Three generations of clowns. 

We were so excited to celebrate Meme's birthday during the weekend too!

Yummy treats!

All three cousins worked together to devour the cake.

 Afterwards...

Luke got to play with his Aunt Lizzy's tortoise. 

He is quite lucky to have an aunt who is an animal lover/vet. 

My mom completed the kids' Halloween costumes, so we had a dress rehearsal for Halloween. She's quite a seamstress! All of the costumes fit, and she didn't even need to take measurements. 

Here are Yoshi and a turtle: 

How did we get the kids to sit still while we took pictures? 

Papa fed them candy fruit slices, of course!

Check out Yoshi's saddle and turtle's shell.

Happy turtle!

Little Cali got to be Toad for Halloween. We decided that Luke could stand in as a Koopa Troopa to be a part of the whole Mario theme. 

Then, we headed back to Columbia for Halloween week. Each day, after I picked Luke up, we ran around in the yard crunching in the leaves. He loves to look at all the pumpkins in our neighborhood. He calls all pumpkins "tee-tee" because he likes to point to the teeth on Jack-O-Lanterns. 

Luke has really gotten into Halloween. He always cackles at witches and says boo when he sees a ghost. He also discovered our candy bowl this week. He repeatedly ran over to the bowl, reached up, grabbed a piece, and yelled, "nandy!" After three small pieces, I decided to hide the bowl as I discovered we were creating a little sugar monster. 

On Halloween we started our Trick-or-Treating at Daddy's work. Luke said, "nandy (candy)" every time he scored some candy from a treat bowl. He didn't want to let go of the pieces to put them in his treat bag. I think he was afraid he wouldn't get them back.

Our little turtle laid down for a rest after his first round of Trick-or-Treating.

When Luke sees a skeleton he lets out an adorable little high pitched scream. He learned this from his friends at the sitter's  house. They were trying to "scare" the sitter. 

Last year by the skeleton...

This year...

Last year...

"Hey, where'd all my cheese balls go?!"

Then, we stopped at Hy-Vee for their Trick-or-Treating event. It was wonderful! Luke got this Halloween balloon as a treat at the floral department. 

His favorite treat was from the produce department-an apple. I always peel apples to make them easier for him to eat, but he would not put this one down. He completely ignored all the candy because he was so interested in the apple. I decided to consider myself lucky on this one. I'm betting this won't happen again next year. 

Then, Luke Trick-or-Treated at our neighbors' houses. They loved seeing him in his costume, and we shared some treats with them. 

When we got home, Luke checked out all his loot. 

He was ready to try out some of his treats. 

I'd say he did pretty well!

The Halloween hangover. Luke enjoyed reading some of his new Halloween books after sleeping in (until 8:45) the following morning.

What a fun week of treats and celebrations!

Happy Halloween!