It Feels Like Fall (When you travel outside the valley....)

We had an amazingly fun, full, and exhausting weekend in San Diego this past weekend!  We hit Legoland (again)--but with friends this time!  Then we added in a pumpkin patch and corn maze--got most of our fall done in 2 days!  :)

Legoland 
Sept 30 was the last day of "friends get in free if you have a membership" and we had wonderful friends take us up on our offer, so off we went!  It also happened to be the first weekend of Legoland's "Brick-or-Treat" festivities so this was the most crowded we'd ever seen it!  Busy day of waiting in lines, but with friends to play with it was so much more bearable and the Halloween decorations were so cute!

Our family ended up staying later for the trick-or-treating events (which made for an 11 hour day), but it was so much fun!  These annual passes have definitely paid for themselves!  After our friends left we took a break to eat at the Legoland Hotel restaurant and change into costumes.  It was good to have a fresh start to our evening!

Best $17 spent that day--helped us get through the night-time festivities so much easier!

Our RV park was literally 5 minutes away. They didn't make it out of the parking lot!

And so begins the "Legoland Hangover"!

The "Legoland Hangover" as my friend called it, lasted officially until Monday night, so it's safe to say that the boys had a blast and so did we!  We love our home away from home in San Diego too!

Oceanside, CA and Buccaneer Beach 
Oceanside is where we stayed over Labor Day weekend but this time we chose another RV park and were SO much happier!  No ants, more room, etc!  We got to eat at the cafe near the beach and were not disappointed! The breakfast burritos were so large that Jeff and I split one and one left over!

Thank goodness for Legos to pass the time while waiting for food!

Our 2 burritos took over this tiny paper bag!

Of course we had to visit the beach. What started as a walk turned into full time wave-jumping for Bennett and freezing feet for the rest of us!  We love the water and are glad to have found this little spot!

Carlsbad Pumpkin Patch & Corn Maze 
We saw these ginormous pumpkins growing during our trip to SD Labor Day weekend, so we knew we'd visit this time around.  These were the largest pumpkins I'd ever seen and it was so fun to take a look!  We picked out a few pumpkins for ourselves, took a tractor ride out to the pumpkin field, ate from some food trucks, and mastered the corn maze in about 15-20 minutes!  Success after an exhausting day the day before!

Not a great pic, but look at the size of those pumpkins!!!

Large and in charge!

Can we say uniformity??

The perfect round pumpkin!

Such a fun weekend!  Almost a little too busy, but we made it! We love having SD 2 hours away--it makes living in the desert definitely more bearable!

Bennett--14 Months

14 Months:  Personality & Independence Reign Supreme!

Heeeyyyyy!  Howdy to Halloween month!

HUGS to Chip!

HUGS to Queso!

HUGS to Baxter (neighbor's cat)!

Can you tell that mommy's been working with me on hugging and being gentle?  She's trying to make my spurts of hitting change course and I love practicing my hugs on animals!  (I'm learning some bad skills apparently from the girls in my daycare room!!)

Growth

• Height--up about 1/2 an inch from last month...but that depends on how wiggly I am on my growth chart!
• Weight--stable at around 24 pounds--give or take the day of eating!
• Clothing--18 month (some 12-18 month depending on brand)
• Diapers--still at size 4 for regular and night-time

Eating

• You want whatever is on our plate--even when you've got the exact same thing on your plate!
• Restaurants are much more work for us since you're so active, so we're not visiting them as frequently as we were.  We'll still go to them because we want you to know how to behave in public (as much as possible), but boy, is it exhausting!
• You're apparently using your spoon more at daycare, but we still struggle with it at home.  You do like to bang the table with it and then drop it to the floor though....is that progress???  :)  (Once again, our "pick it up once" rule has come in handy with this action!)
• Right after your 14 month birthday we completely quit all bottles.  You now just have a sippy/straw cup.  I still haven't tried to change the bottle routine--it's been a rough month of teething and the two nights I lessened the amounts of milk you got at bedtime you "told" me you weren't happy!

Sleeping

• You are napping GREAT at daycare and getting better at home just taking one nap.  It's hard because so often you're ready for a nap before lunch, but we try to keep you on your daycare schedule, which is a nap only after lunch!  Sometimes you sneak one in though--and that's okay with us!
• You had a few nights where you woke up from around 12:30-2:30ish, but we think (and were hoping) that it was due to teething.

The World of Bennett

Getting better at going down the slide!

You're hilarious in the tub now and LOVE to splash and "GO" from one end to the other! You love putting your Little People boat captain in his spot on the boat, bring the boat to your mouth, drink the dripping water, and then bite off the captain!  Silly boy!  You also love putting the drain stopper back in, as well as putting it on the side of the tub when I ask  you to.  It's a rush to get the toys out of the drain so you can put it back in!

 

*You love bubbles.  HOWEVER....the day you stuck the bubble wand into your mouth multiple times instead of trying to blow on it (even after me saying "No, no, no!!!") that washing your mouth out with soap when you get older probably will have the opposite effect!  (Not that I'd actually do that...but it's good to know now that it might backfire!   The day you sat on my lap for literally 20 minutes dipping the wand in/out of the container was such a great time with you.  Love you sweet boy!

*Your molars are now coming in--yikes!

*You taught yourself how to open the back door at the end of October--so now it's dead bolted if we're inside!

*Started giving good hugs (arms around neck) at night when you're not so ready to get into bed!

*Brought me my shoes one morning because you knew they went on my feet--that was a pretty funny move!  You definitely see/learn more than we think you do!

*You can move yourself backwards a little bit in your car.

*Gilbane Picnic, Pumpkin Patch, Turkeyfest (blog to come), and Halloween (blog to come).  Whew!  It has been a busy month!

Petting the animals at the fall festival in Will's neighborhood.  You loved giving all of them hugs!

Yep--you now can make it onto the couch on your own...when you're not whining about being put up there!

Halloween skeleton

Playing in the sprinkler with Chip!  Gotta love November weather in Texas!

What?  The stick was just sitting in the yard waiting for me to pick it up!

Playdate fun with Violet, Will, Rory, and Carly

This is my favorite.  Somehow he decided that he liked to eat on this rug by the back door.  We only have afternoon snack there, and he will sit if he just sees me with the container!  Love it!

Taking after mommy and using my Chic-fil-A dipping sauce for everything!

Sensory play with pom poms.  Thank goodness mommy uses Pinterest to find ideas!



 

 





Pumpkin Patch!

This year we actually planned for a pumpkin patch visit since B is big enough to walk around and explore!  We hit up the Methodist church right down the street from our church because it had a small, shaded area with lots o' pumpkins!  We weren't disappointed and B LOVED checking out all the pumpkins!

"The Walk" to pick the perfect one!

1st pumpkin he touched = the one we bought!

So, what about these?  Can they come with us too?

 



Oh Daddy!  You're so funny!

Mom!  Look at all the pumpkins!

I can have any one I want???

Well, I kind of like these little guys.

So easy to carry!

But, this big guy isn't too shabby either!

Is there something under here for me?

All in all, a perfect pumpkin patch day!