happy halloween!

hope you had a fun halloween... all these hogwarts students did! beckett went to school, downtown kirkland trick or treating, trick or treating at matt's office, and out to the neighborhood for the evening. phew. that's a lot of candy. beckett was very good about asking, "what is safe for me?" which means, what is peanut free? poor, poor beckett... no peanut butter mnm's, butterfingers, or reeses peanut butter cups for him. somehow he still managed to enjoy the holiday. having 1,000 lollipops helps.

all hallows eve

don't worry... we still took pictures of beckett in festive jammies on the eve of halloween. good thing his friend coen has a million themed jammie hand me downs to give!

2011

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2013

double double toil and trouble...

something adorable this way comes. it's harry, ron, hermione, and ginny of course. and they are pretty much the cutest thing that ever happened on halloween.

guess what?!

hurray! a new baby is joining our family on or around may 7th! we are so, so excited... even though i have been so, so sick so far. beckett can hardly handle the anticipation of becoming a big brother, he asks every single day if the baby is ready to come out. pregnancy is a true test of patience for everybody! beckett is also very sure the baby is a boy and that we should name him pickles. matt and i don't care about the gender... just hoping for healthy and much to my favorite tiny person's dismay... boy or girl, this baby won't be named pickles.

here are were some other pics we considered using for the announcement...

and outakes... 

matt's garlic fest

matt turned the big 3-1 and for his birthday we had a garlic fest. everybody made a garlic dish... chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, garlic mashed potatoes, garlic kale chips, cauliflower with roasted garlic, garlic pull-apart bread, cabbage salad with garlic dressing, and bacon wrapped garlic steak. whoa... it was intense. and good. i went back and forth on whether or not it was a good idea to do a garlic dessert and decided no. garlic ice cream is not really good, and everybody knows it! so, i made my first ever from scratch layer cake! i made a pumpkin cake with cinnamon whipped cream frosting. i was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out! we had a fun night celebrating matt... who deserves to be celebrated a lot because he is the best!

 

the invitations had a bag of garlic attached... for creating a garlic side dish!

 shirley temples made with syringes!

 party favors... one entire box was needed after dinner

 this party had a lot of vampires in attendance, considering all the garlic