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! :)

Fun New Friends

Braden has found a fun new friend! Her name is Ainsley. She is in our ward, just a few months older than Braden and I watch her occasionally, which Braden loves!

It is so fun to see him play with other little kids and start to get into that more social stage where he really gets excited to play with other kids.

Ainsley is particularly a great playmate because she is not too intense - she's pretty relaxed and happy. :) Braden likes to play, but he likes to have his space too, and it usually takes him a while to warm up. He can be pretty shy. But he and Ainsley are great little buds and just entertain each other and laugh so hard together it is hilarious! I love it. I get so much done when she's here too, because Braden has someone else to play with and keep his attention! It's a win-win situation all the way around and I really love that he has a sweet little best friend!

Just so cute!

And you can see from the picture above that Ainsley lacks no fear in trying anything Braden does. :) He started climbing up the TV and she was barely a step behind him. He seemed to think it was great that he had a little friend around to be a monkey with him!

Big Boy Bed!!!

Braden has been sleeping on a mattress on the floor since we moved to this house because we thought he was old enough to not be in a crib - but not old enough to be up very high yet - plus we didn't really have a bed for him yet. Then, we found the jackpot! Sometimes when people move around here they leave any stuff they don't want to take with them on the curb. The city comes and picks up whatever other people haven't already taken by then sometime the next week. It is basically a free-for-all. :) And we love anything that is free! So we found a really nice set of bunk beds, a great office chair, a banana chair and a few other random things. It was awesome!

So were a little forced to put Braden's bed together because of some unsavory bugs around the house (one found running across his bed!!! i was thoroughly disgusted and grossed out!). I wasn't sure of what he would think of it, but he LOVES it!!!!! He bounces on it all the time and thinks his big bed is awesome!

Preparing for a big jump!

And the jump was a little too big! His pants came right down! It was hilarious!

I love these shelves for decorating his room! Though I'm still working on finding good, cheap ideas for what to put up there...any ideas are welcome! :)

At the Zoo

We took a little family break a couple of weeks ago and went to the zoo together. It was so much fun to just go and be together, spending time as a little family. :) Plus Braden loves animals so he was pretty excited about the whole thing!

Justin and I thought it was so funny that this elephant was just standing there with his back legs crossed!

Petting and feeding the goats was Brado's favorite part of the zoo by far!

Loving Fall

We are all thoroughly enjoying the fall season here, but no one more so than Braden! I remember enjoying playing in the fallen leaves as a child, but I don't remember loving nearly as much as Braden does. The joy he finds in it is just contagious and I really find myself feeling like a little kid again playing with him and seeing the joy he has in everything! It seems like I am enjoying childhood 10 times more just living it through him. I just love his energy and excitement for life!

I was so bummed that this picture didn't turn out better - but you can still see the pure joy in his face even though it is dark :)

Date Night with Brado

Wednesday's are becoming me and Braden's date night. :)

Justin plays soccer from 5:30 until 7ish, so I decided we should go out and have some fun, too.

This week we went to the Chrysler Museum of Art! It is free, welcomes kids and is a great place to explore. Braden had a great time. The museum is pretty big, so we didn't see nearly everything, but the rooms we did see he would walk into and go "oooooh" and point to things, then run to the next room to do the same thing. I think his favorite parts were the big panels of cloth artistic-ly hung from the ceiling (they were very colorful!) and all the big, castle-like stairs to climb!

Monkey had to come along for the trip, too. :)

The museum from the outside.

The view from the museum. It was a beautiful, warm evening, which made it even better.

These beauties popped up in our yard a week ago! It was so fun and random - they are not connected to a bush or anything, just random stalks that pop up the end of fall and make these beautiful, bright flowers! Thanks to the genius of my friend Linds, I was able to find out exactly what they were from the picture - Nerine Lily or Guernsey Lily. They are from Africa and do look quite exotic. I'm glad they grow here. :)

(Rachel - yes, that is the same Guernsey of the book! Supposedly a ship of these sunk right by the island and they took root there and started to grow. I was so happy I knew where Guernsey was and a little bit about it! I think we are going to have to go there someday. :) )