Trick-or-Treat

Today was a truly awesome day.  I took the day off of work and had an Eva and Mommy day (I really miss being a stay-at-home-mom sometimes).  We started out by sleeping in until 8:30 this morning, which was heavenly.  Then we headed to Eva's school for her first real conferences.  Her teacher said she is wonderfully behaved and is becoming more and more social; believe it or not she hardly spoke at school at all last year- ha!  Wish she did that at home once in awhile.  Her "math" skills are actually better than her reading, which surprised me a bit since neither Jason and I are math people at all but maybe she'll go on to be the whiz I never was.
After her conferences we headed to the gym for some much needed treadmill time, for me, not Eva ;-) and then stopped by my work to show off my cutie-patootie.  After work we had some delicious Chipotle lunch and Coldstone ice cream and then headed for a matinee movie to see the new Puss in Boots.  Eva loved it and I had some good laughs as well.

After the movie we picked up Daddy and headed up to Ramsey to go trick-or-treating in our old neighborhood with the Olssons.  Two hours and pounds of candy we later we finally made it home for some much needed downtime. 

Eva was Rapunzel from the Disney movie Tangled but I'll have to upload those photos later as she wore a kitty costume to be warm in the colder weather today.  Happy Halloween!

At Mommy's work- I swear it doesn't look that bleak in real life

Only ones in the theater

Boo booty!

Getting tired towards the end = "Daddy carry me"

I Love Vampires!

Happy Halloween 2011!  We'll do our trick-or-treating on Monday, so I'll post photos of Eva in all of her Rapunzel glory after that, but mommy celebrated Halloween last night by going to Downtown Anoka, which is- literally- the Halloween Capitol of the World (no really, you can google it).

I showed my off vampire love, complete with neck bite, and had my vamp loving twin LaRae with me as well.  Now I just need to decide who my favorite vampire is... too many to choose!

Grandpa Bryan

Eva is blessed to have six wonderful grandparents: my mom (Baba) and dad as well as Jason's parents who are both remarried, Grandma Peggy & Grandpa Bryan and Grandpa Randy & Grandma Diane.  Extra grandparents = extra love and, for those of you who haven't met him, Eva's Grandpa Bryan (Jason's stepdad) is loving the grandpa role!  He never had children of his own so we weren't totally sure how he'd handle the baby/toddler granddaughter thing but it took Eva all of a few months to have him totally wrapped around her little finger.  She has that affect on people ;-)

BFFs in the hot tub!

Sleeping at the Parks House

This is what I come upstairs to every night, either a naked toddler butt or a sneaky Eva who has crawled into bed with Daddy.

Day at Elm Creek Park

I have found the Mecca of parks, and it is glorious!  Elm Creek Reserve is my newest obsession.  It's where we take our nightly walks with Baba and on the far side of the reserve, in Maple Grove, there is a huge new park that is probably one of the coolest parks I've ever seen (and we're sort of park aficionados in this family).

The pictures don't do it justice but we will be back before the season is over and I promise to post more!

Awesome swing

Pool!

We are fortunate enough to have a great, zero-entry pool at the gym we go to.  They keep the water nice and warm and even have a big water slide that I'm sure Eva will enjoy when she's a bit older.  We hope to start swim lessons in the new year but for now being able to just play around and become comfortable in the pool is tons of fun.

Always with the sassy hip, where does she get such attitude!?

Where did Eva go?

Peek-a-boo

There she is!

Books

Our local library had its annual book sale two weeks ago and I was able to pick up a huge paper grocery bag full of books for just $3 dollars!  On top of that I spent a good $50+ on new books through Eva's school's Scholastic book order program so we now have more books than we know what to do with.  Oh wait, I know what we'll do- read them! 

Jason hates my "reading" voice (i.e. inflection) but it's better than the alternative, which is having her sound like a robot when she reads like daddy does ;-)

Day at the Park by Church

Our church has a great little park right behind it so after last Sunday's service I took advantage of the great weather and took Eva for some much needed park time.  Because we never go to the church in this family, right? ha!

Her hair is getting so long!

mmm picking random garbage up, wonderful

Bella!