Happy Birthday / Happy Halloween

My little boy is 3! We had fun celebrating birthday and Halloween...

After reading one of our books where the mouse painted pumpkins with lots of different kinds of faces on them, Gulliver decided we should paint our pumpkin instead of carving it. I agreed that was a great idea, so we got the paints out and had at it...

2 purple eyes, a green nose, 3 red mouths, blue hair, and 2 yellow ears. It's the perfect pumpkin!

Gulliver had school on his birthday, so he got to bring treats in that day. He decided he wanted Thomas the Train cupcakes. So I told him that sounded great -- but only if he helped me make them. He did his share and more. Pouring in all the ingredients, stirring everything up, and lining the cupcake tray...

Placing the "sticker" into each cupcake...

The finished treat!

I couldn't ask for a better helper.

We went to a Halloween party at the playground. Gulliver had been saying for a week that he wanted to dress up as a ladybug. So ladybug it was...

He enjoyed singing Happy Birthday and opening presents. And he really enjoyed those cupcakes. I think he ate 3 of them throughout the course of the day!

Happy Birthday, my dear sweet 3-year old Gulliver.

I love you bunches and bunches and BUNCHES!!!

St. Louis 2012

Went to St. Louis with Gulliver earlier this month to see family. Hard to believe a whole year had passed since we'd been there!

Mark, Gulliver, and I spent the morning together running errands and playing in the park before he took us to the airport for our afternoon flight.

We had a delightful trip and Gulliver loved riding the airplanes, of course. Gunnison to Denver. Denver to St. Louis. Everything went off without a hitch.

Playing in the Gunnison airport....

The first plane ride...

Killing time in DIA...

Denver to St. Louis...

Grandpa picked us up from the St. Louis airport. We headed to his house where we would stay for the next 4 nights. Jake and Harper spent the first night there, too, so we got an extra special greeting from Grandma Theresa and "the cousins." Gulliver immediately gravitated to the toy corner. I swear he remembered it from the year before.

We went to Harper's field hockey game…

Played lots and lots and lots of trucks at Grandpa's house….

Visited the pumpkin patch, took a hay ride (aka "tractor pulling a wagon"), played on the playground, and carved a "silly face" jack-o-lantern at home….

We went to the zoo, saw lots of animals, and rode the zoo train….

Then we stayed at GaGa's for the next 3 nights (which actually turned into 6 nights, since we delayed our departure after Gulliver started running a fever). We were greeted with a luncheon and saw some people from childhood I haven't seen in many, many years. A real stroll down memory lane!

We checked out the Museum of Transportation and got to play with lots of trains…

And we spent lots of time lounging around Ga Ga's house -- creating artwork, playing iPad / iPhone games, and pushing carts -- while Gulliver took it easy and got rid of the fever / sore throat / cough he picked up along the way.

Since we pushed our return flight back a few days, we had to take what we could get. Times were not ideal. We awoke at 3:30am to catch a 5:55am flight to Denver. Then had a 5+ hour layover until our next flight at 12:30.  While it was a long travel day, and certainly exhausting at times, we still managed to have fun. Gulliver has proven once again he is quite the little traveler!

Thanks to everyone for making our St Louis trip so fun and another trip to remember!