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!

First Corn on the Cob and First Dessert Terrarium

Lately Ernie has been very interested in my socks.

Big Ern cemented his midwestern heritage today and dined on his first corn on the cob.

Zoe accompanied us on today's gift card pickup.

We met up with Shubra and Sumit at Ascend Prime Steak & Sushi in Bellevue. It's kind of an expensive place so we did not order steak or sushi, but we did have a couple apps and cocktails and admire the view.

The centerpiece of the night was sharing this full on dessert terrarium.

"Magic Mushroom

white chocolate cherry mousse, mocha crumb, matcha shortbread, chocolate pot de creme, honey meringue mushroom"

There were no survivors.