Fire Station Fun!!!

(Braden the Fireman - Fireman in Training! Just look at him driving that truck! Haha!)

This is a little late in coming, but I had to wait for pictures from a friend since I completely forgot to bring my camera! I was so glad someone remembered to bring one since this is probably on Braden's list of Top 10 highlights of his short little life thus far!

(Braden climbing into the truck to drive and turn all the flashing lights on with this great fireman's help!)

On Veteran's day, all our friends' older kids were out of school and I had heard that there was a really cool, big Fire Station that did awesome tours for kids for free. So I set it all up and WOW it was one of the best play-dates ever!!!

It was especially fun because, out of all the med student's kids, all but two are boys. So, needless to say, the boys were EATING THE WHOLE THING UP!

(This is Braden up in the cherry picker part of the truck. He LOVED every minute of it!)

I can't say enough good things about these Firemen. They just went above and beyond in my opinion to make sure that every kid there had an awesome experience. They had stickers, coloring books and suckers to real the kids all in, and then they did crazy things with them like let them "drive" the trucks and turn on the lights, use their walkee-talkees, try to hold their huge tools, put on their gear, look into their heat-sensitive cameras in the dark to see each other, and - Braden's favorite part -

climb up the ladder on top of the fire truck and walk across to the cherry picker!

All the bigger boys were jumping at the chance to do that. I knew Braden would be a bit small to go up there, so I took him over to the ladder thinking he could climb up a few rungs and then he would get down.

I was so wrong. The fireman helping the kids up saw that Braden would be too little to go up by himself, so he simply said, "Oh come here little guy, I'll take you up there." And he picked little Brado up with a big smile on his face and climbed up with him.

Braden LOVES to be up on top of things, LOVES firetrucks, and LOVES cherry pickers even more. (We have had a lot of cherry pickers randomly around our neighborhood cutting down limbs of really high trees and it is fascinating to him. I don't know how many kids under the age of two know the word "cherry-picker", but he has been obsessed with them for months now and always talks about them and pretends he is up high in the cherry picker.)

So with that kind of background I can' tell you how fun it was to see that sweet fireman make one of Braden's big dreams come true!!!

After they all came back down Braden just kept pointing to that truck and saying,

"Up ladder. Cherry picker. Up ladder again?"

Happy Halloween!

Aren't they so cute?!!! Justin and I were sick this Halloween, which made for a kind of bummer Halloween for Braden, but we still tried to have a little fun! Justin hates dressing up, and told me he would only dress up if I found a "Man in the Yellow Hat" costume, from Curious George. He only said this because he didn't think I would ever come up with a totally yellow outfit for him, but he underestimated me. Haha! :) I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. He grumbled a lot, but was a great sport and dressed up.

Braden made the cutest little monkey! And he loved playing the part! After putting the costume on he even kept referring to himself as a monkey. When it was time to go to our ward's Trunk or Treat he kept saying to himself, "Come on, Monkey" "In car, Monkey" "Sit down Monkey" and "Let's go Monkey!"

It was so funny! It seemed the most natural thing to him to be playing a monkey.

He loved saying Trick or Treat and getting candy. And the next morning the first thing he did when he woke up was come into our room and ask for his milk and to put on George Monkey.

I was in a more-than-usually indecisive mood, so instead of picking and choosing which pictures to put up, I just put them all up.

I have to laugh at this one because it looks like he is professing his love to his banana!

He really enjoyed putting on the make-up...

He looks like a such a sad, lonely little monkey here!

He was almost a cow this year, but as you can see he wasn't nearly as happy about it as he was with the monkey. Plus his head is just really too big for the cow hat...

And we started a great tradition this year! He and I made sugar cookies!

I have never made sugar cookies with Braden before and he thought it was awesome!

He loved eating the dough and flour, and especially loved cutting out the shapes and putting them on the pan. He was really sad when we were all out of dough and wanted to take them all off and do it over again!

Then later I had him put sprinkles on them after I had frosted them. He loves anything that shakes, and loves sugar, and loves making a mess - the combination of all of these was like the best thing ever! He's been asking to make cookies ever since and I have no doubt that he will talk me into it one of these days and we will be making that great fun mess all over again!

Now we just need someone to eat all the cookies besides me! :)