Halloween 2011

On Halloween day, I took Garytt over to Justin's office for a little bit in the afternoon. Of course, he just loved all the attention he received from the students that we saw while walking across campus and all the employees we met in the office. Garytt is not shy and loves to be the center of attention!

After that, we came home for a bit to wait for the trick-or-treating to start. Trick-or-treat goes from 5pm-7pm here in Oshkosh, which was a little earlier than I expected. So, we quickly got Garytt back in his costume as soon as we had some dinner.

We posed him on the stairs with the Jack-O-Lanterns. He made some funny faces.











Then it was time to go trick-or-treating. Justin wore jeans and a turtle neck and called himself Steve Jobs.


Cat in the Hat and Steve Jobs


Off they go

Here is a video of them heading out to trick-or-treat.



I stayed home on candy duty, although I only had one trick-or-treater while they were gone. They didn't really stay out too long though because Garytt really doesn't understand the idea of getting free candy...and Justin and I don't need all that candy around...hahaha.

Here is a video of them returning. Apparently, Garytt's favorite part of the evening was when he saw a girl dressed as a lion...and he roared at her...maybe Garytt should have been a lion.



We played in the yard for a little while when they returned from trick-or-treating.






We are both "roaring" like a lion.


Us in front of the house.


Justin and Garytt acting silly

When Garytt saw the Jack-O-Lanterns lit up, he also wanted to play on our porch with them.


Jack-O-Lanterns lit up

So, we moved the big one up to the actual porch so he could look at it and took a video. Again, thanks to Mimi for the battery powered light. We couldn't let him play with the second pumpkin because I had an actual candle in that one.



Here are a few pictures of just Garytt in his costume. It is getting dark, so the background isn't that great. But I just have to take this opportunity and thank Grandma for Garytt's wonderful costume. She made the hat for his first birthday party. Then we thought we would just use black sweats for the costume, but she found a panda costume with a detachable hood for about $5 at a resell shop. We took the hood off and added a red bow tie and a cat tail (which she sewed up in like 10 minutes) and we had an instant Cat in the Hat. I loved the gloves on the costume, especially since it was chilly here last night.









We all enjoyed our Halloween this year. I loved Garytt's costume, especially since he was the only Cat in the Hat that I saw during any of the events that we went to during this past week. But it had to come to an end and the Cat in the Hat had to get a bath and become Garytt again.

We hope everyone had a safe and Happy Halloween!!

Pumpkin Carving

Garytt and I flew back to Wisconsin on Sunday. When we got back to the house, we did a little unpacking and then decided we really needed to carve the pumpkins for Halloween or else they wouldn't get done.

Last year Justin did the honors of carving our pumpkin. He attempted it this year but since he has been extremely busy remodeling part of our bathroom while I was gone, his wrists were giving out, so I ended up carving them instead.


Getting Garytt strapped into the seat for viewing.


Justin attempting to carve the first pumpkin.

Garytt wasn't having fun being strapped into the seat. I thought maybe he couldn't see well enough. So, when I took over cleaning out the first pumpkin, we let him stand up to see better...it still didn't interest him that much.







We ended up buckling him back into his seat and letting him play with the pumpkin guts...he was pretty grossed out by it at first, so I let him push it around with the spoon. Eventually he was pushing it around with his fingers too.





Here is a video of him playing in the pumpkin.



When I had the first Jack-O-Lantern done, we showed it to Garytt. He really liked it.


Pointing to the pumpkin's mouth


Showing us his mouth...I'm cracking up.


Garytt with my very traditional looking Jack-o-Lantern

We asked Garytt to point out different part of the Jack-O-Lantern...eyes, nose, mouth. Here is the video of that.



Then we placed a battery powered light into the Jack-O-Lantern so that Garytt could see what it looked like lit up. (Thanks to Mimi for giving him that light, which made it safe to allow him to explore the pumpkin without getting burned.) Here is a short video of that.



Even though Justin couldn't carve the pumpkin, he did design the second pumpkin. My pumpkin was carved into a very happy and traditional face. Justin's pumpkin turned out very fun too! I liked how different it was compared to mine.


Done with the second pumpkin.


Garytt is inspecting the second pumpkin.


The final products on the porch.

It was fun to see Garytt react to the pumpkins once they had faces but I hope next year Garytt gets more involved in the actual pumpkin carving.

2011 Boo at the Zoo

Saturday Grandma, Grandpa, Garytt (aka The Cat in the Hat), and I went to the Topeka Zoo for Boo at the Zoo. Wow! It was very crowded there!

At first it was difficult to get Garytt to focus on anything but pushing his own stroller...we would have been better off to have just left the stroller in the car so it wouldn't have been such a distraction.



We first stopped at the giraffes. Here he is checking them out.





Chester from Cheeto's was at the zoo. We tried to get Garytt to go take a picture but he only wanted to watch from afar...I'm not sure if he was scared of Chester or if he was scared we wouldn't give him the stroller back.



Garytt's all time favorite animal is a lion! He loves to "roar" like a lion. So, we saw some stuffed lions and snapped a few pictures...but since they were actually lionesses, I don't think he realized they also "roar."



So, we decided we should probably head over to see the real lions. On they way, there was a lion statue. Garytt totally recognized it and started "roaring."



They had a viewing cave but that was still too far away for him to really see the lion well.



We continued on to the other viewing area where he was better able to see the lions and then he was all about roaring.





We also got to see the elephants, but Garytt was more interested in climbing the fence.



Garytt did do a little bit of trick-or-treating while we were at the zoo but he really didn't seem to get the concept.



There was also a small hay maze for the kids. We tried to take Garytt in there but there were too many big kids running around and jumping over the hay bales for my comfort.



By that time, Garytt seemed to be ready to go do something else. We had been there for about an hour or so and it was really quite warm. I think the temp was in the mid 70's and his costume is black and furry...so he was getting hot. We decided it was time to head out and go across the street to let him run around on the playground for a bit.

On the way to the playground, we actually stripped him out of the costume. He had a onesie on underneath and then I pulled on some pants I had with me...they didn't match too well but he had to be much more comfortable in short sleeves than in that hot cat costume.

Garytt really had a great time playing on the swings with Grandpa pushing him.







Garytt was so tired after his afternoon out with the animals that he crashed before we even made it home. It was a fun time and maybe next year he will understand the trick-or-treat part better.

I also want to give a special Thank You to Grandpa for toting Garytt around all day! It was a nice break for me and allowed me to get some pictures!