Baby Shark

For the past week or so we've been abusing a promotion at Redmond Town Center where if you take a Halloween photo and post it to social media you get a gift card. Today was both the last day of the promotion and a trick-or-treat event at the mall. We were too deep to stop now.

Ern donned one of his many of this year's costumes. Shark!

I just so happened to have a shark costume of my own.

Lydia put on her old Ariel costume. Zoe... was seaweed?

We are officially gift card rich. Now what to spend them on?

Lydia likes to play a game where she insists we watch a movie then passes out 15 minutes later. This time she was so certain that she could stay awake through Barbie that she even made me a bet. Then she fell asleep, I won the bet, and watched a lovely film by myself. That's a winner.

Free Pastries for Days

We made our daily stop for our Halloween gift card at Redmond Town Center.

Our friend Renaud brought over maybe 300 pastries and we ate them all. I'm not proud but also have no regrets.

Major Award Winning Baby

With Halloween approaching Lydia has been checking online marketplaces for used costumes. She found a few good ones and rather than go through the suffering of making a choice between them all we bought all of them.

The Pacific Bonsai Museum and Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden were having a costume contest so we thought that would be a good opportunity for Ern to try out one of his new outfits. We didn't want any boogers on his clothes so he got suited up in the trunk in the parking lot.

We thought garden gnome fit well with the outdoorsy theme.

Nailed it.

We checked out some bonsais while we waited for the judges to make their solemn determination of world's cutest baby.

Winner winner chicken dinner!

I am now the proud owner of a prize winning baby!

We got a bag of treats and a gift certificate to the plant shop. I've been putting a lot of time and money into this whole parenting thing so it's nice that my investment is finally paying off.

We went plant shopping.

Ernie had a victory meal at Puerto Vallarta Federal Way. I believe this was his first taste of refried beans.

He was a big fan.

Picked up our gift card at Redmond Town Center.

Ernie likes his new play table but nothing is quite as fun as: my foot!

The Hottest Dog

Big Ern outgrew his baby tub thing and has graduated to this tubby chair.

What have I done?!

We went to one of Zoe's coworker's house for a Halloween party. They had a map on the wall where they scratched off where they visited. I laughed that while they'd been to a few countries they had wisely avoided visiting Missouri.

Zoe borrowed my Fred Flintstone from last year.

No matter how many times I wear my Target hotdog costume, I just can't quit it.

Later I ended up at Shorty's to free my hotdog brethren from their chains. FREEDOM!

Practice Day at School

Today was a big milestone as it was Ernie's first day at Sundance Preschool. It was a short day practice run situation but I think it was good to help him acclimate to this new phase in his life.

They sent us lots of pictures which was great. He seemed a little "too" happy to be without us. Rude. Just the fact that they had so many toys that he hadn't played with yet was probably very exciting.

They have an app where I get alerts on every single thing he does, including poops. Thanks, technology.

I'm especially excited for Ern to be able to play with the others kids and get socialized.

I'm going to have to start trying to remember what it was that I did all day before I had a little dude up in my business 24/7.

Back at home he had a first practice day at school victory dinner and made lots more funny faces.

Roasted red bell pepper was the main attraction.