Dribbles, Nibbles & Scribbles: leaves

...and hope everyone had a very Happy Halloween. If your Halloween was cancelled by Sandy, I'm sorry. BUT, lucky for us here in Saratoga Springs, we barely got a rain shower and Halloween was ON. Full force.

Seriously, we were so lucky for the weather for all our Halloween activities since the forecast for both Sunday (when we had our neighborhood Halloween Parade) and Wednesday looked pretty grim.

We started out our Halloween preparation by visiting Sunnyside Gardens one more time. Mostly because it was awesome. It helped that the weather was nice. And who couldn't use one last kid-friendly "Haunted" Hayride? We met up with our playgroup friends for some added fun.

Hanging in the Pumpkin Patch

Cleaning up the Hayride

The best part. This. Cutest. Thing. Ever.

3 Babies in a Wagon

Saturday was the Saratoga Springs Fall Festival. We dressed MiniM.E. up in her owl costume (complete with "whoo-ing") for the first time. This is how she felt about it to start.

Fortunately, she got over it, and we had a good time Trick-or-Treating at the stores on Broadway. Unfortunately, MiniM.E. took a record nap (of course, the one time we want to get up and go somewhere) and we missed the petting zoo and some other kid-friendly activities. We did get to play in the park and take TWO last rides on the carousel for the season.

"Get. It. Off"

Hanging out at one of the stores

We also stopped in at Starbucks where we had an informal photo shoot. This year's best Halloween pictures are definitely at Starbucks.

Sunday afternoon we had our neighborhood Halloween Parade. We'll call it a "First Annual." It was really successful and a lot of people came out to march down the street behind Bob on his unicycle. (No, I don't have a picture of that :( Hopefully someone will send me one). I was able to get everyone together for the parade using Nextdoor.com, an awesome website that allows you to make a FREE website for your neighborhood. (Interested? Let me know and we can both get $50 Starbucks gift cards!)

Ready to go!

A. and her parents. A chicken, a rooster and an egg. Too cute.

With Daddy the (smeary) tiger.

I guess the actual marching in a parade was a little too much for MiniM.E. (she cried the whole time), but she sure liked playing in the leaves at the beginning and end of the parade!

We enjoyed the leaves on Monday while we waited for Hurricane Sandy and Halloween.

I have to admit, while I'm glad that we didn't get hit hard by Sandy, I was a little disappointed that we didn't even lose power. How Halloweeny would that have been!?!

BUT, we did have nice weather for Halloween, which was fantastic, because I'm pretty sure a raincoat-wearing owl probably wouldn't have cut it for me and we just would have stayed in.

On Halloween we had plans to visit the Riggi Mansion for their annual Halloween Party, complete with trick-or-treating for full-sized candy bars and the chance to win $100, ponies, cider and donuts. And of course, security guards. Last year we went when MiniM.E. was only two weeks old. It was so cool, it became the start of a yearly tradition. Our friends from Germany were visiting and it seemed like the perfect Saratoga on Halloween activity. We met at M.'s house (just like last year) with our Germans and our playgroup friends.

MiniM.E. just wanted to watch TV

The three babies (this might rival the wagon photo)

Ready to walk to the mansion!

This year we planned on getting their earlier to avoid the huge line, but we had to wait almost an hour anyway.

Waiting patiently.

Fortunately, there were ponies to pet.

Last year, MiniM.E. was too little to sit on the princess's lap (it wasn't even Michele Riggi last year, it was her daughter, so it wouldn't have been the same anyway), but this year I plopped her right down next to the princess (and by plopped, please read: shoved my screaming baby at the princess, who had to struggle to get my "scarecrow-ing" baby to bend her legs enough to sit down on her lap). I was attempting to make faces and dance around in hopes of elliciting a smile (so I didn't get a picture, but I will update as soon as the photographer's website is updated), but I failed miserably and MiniM.E. cried the whole time. (I CANNOT wait for her to sit on Santa's lap. Seriously.) Poor Cinderella. We didn't even get the golden ticket.

MiniM.E. forgot all about it as soon as I let her taste a donut.

Here is MiniM.E. playing on the steps in front of M.'s house.

She's so good at going up and down stairs now, she thinks its a game. Sadly, she only napped for 20 minutes yesterday and was really tired... so this ended up in a faceplant on the sidewalk.

Can you see that egg?

Poor MiniM.E.

She seemed exhausted but fine from the fall, so we skipped trick-or-treating and just had a bath and went to bed (well, Bob and I stayed up and ate pizza with our German friends and handed out candy).

And now it's November already. I can't believe it! Bring on Thanksgiving!!

Two weeks ago Bob took a long weekend and we drove to NH to do some leaf peeping and enjoy autumn-like activities. The leaf peeping went really well on the drive over and we got to see some really nice foliage. We planned some great activities, and fortunately the weather held out a little bit because for the most part it was pretty rainy.

I'm just a tad late in posting about it because my baby girl turned one yesterday and it was a pretty big deal. Two weeks of ~~bawling~~ preparing for my baby to become a toddler... but more about that later.

I really want to share all the cute photos of MiniM.E., but it takes a lot of time and effort to be witty, funny and informative in my posts, so for the sake of time, this and the next few posts will be light on text, heavy on photos. Thanks for understanding!

My favorite part of going home is just relaxing... seeing my family and having an extra pair or two of hands to help out with MiniM.E.

We really enjoyed playing outside this trip...