Halloween 2009

Aunt Kiki came up for the weekend to see her nephew's first Halloween and hang out with us. It's always great to see family -- I sure miss them! Kristen brought her two dogs, Callie (blonde) and Dutch (black lab) with her to play with Easton -- he thought he was in puppy Heaven, he had sooo much fun! Dutch was jealous of the attention Kris was giving James so he kept trying squeeze himself in between them.

Dutch was a bit wide still for James to take a puppy ride on him, but it worked for a few minutes :-)

James is not at all afraid of big dogs (which is good), he just kept right on playing as Dutch decided he wanted to get to Kristen on the couch and literally was standing over him.

Our 2nd lil' puppy dog! He was OK with being in the outfit for the first time but was NOT happy about being stuffed in there a 2nd-3rd and 4th time, hehe. He can still fit in 3-6 months clothes (he's 7.5) but this 0-9 month outfit was definitely on the small side! Another week and I'm not sure I could have crammed him in there! Maybe he went through a huge growth spurt? We can only hope for our peanut!

A self-picture of Mommy and her puppy dog :-)

We put another hat on James to keep his head warm because it was pretty chilly at only about 45 degrees (and to help keep his puppy ears up in place) and then we stuck him in the stroller to walk around the neighbors and show them our Bug all dressed up. He looked so bundled up and reminded us of Ralphie's little brother (Randy?) from "A Christmas Story" -- "I can't put my arms down!" -- all you saw were his big brown eyes :-)

Caleb was a skunk this year -- he lives down the street to the left and is 9 days younger than James -- we'll have to get lots of embarrassing pictures of them when they are little so we can bust them out at high school graduation :-)

Caleb's older brother, Luke (2.5 yrs), was a train conductor -- he had the whistle and everything!
Down the street the other way is Mason. He was a lion for Halloween but was already out of his costume by the time we got around to their house. Mason is gonna be a big brother in February!

We caught up with our neighbors and got a group photo. Bella (2.5 yrs) is a frog and Abby (4.5 yrs) is a witch. Abby has the "smile and look amazingly cute for the camera" thing down-pat, doesn't she?!?

Katie came down after her nap to see James so they could get a picture of them both all dressed up. Her mom said she's either a dragon fly or a butterfly -- some kind of a fly -- well, whatever it is, it's adorable! James was NOT happy to be back in his costume here but Katie was quite photogenic...and Yes, Katie really is that much taller than him :-) (well, the picture is a bit deceiving as James is all slouched, but she's got a good inch or two on him I think).