Keeping Up With The Wakens

This year Avery and Phillip were monkeys, I was a banana, and Phill was a vampire in the morning for his preschool classes and then a zoo keeper in the evening. We went Trick-or-Treating at the Trick or Treat Street in the King Soopers shopping center. Then we took the kids to my parents house to show them their costumes and went Trick-or-Treating around their neighborhood. On Saturday I had to work so Phill took the kids to the Webster Lake Wards Halloween party and Trick-or-Trunk. Avery loved running around, and playing the Halloween games.
Overall we had a really good time this Halloween and Avery continues to ask to go Trick-or-Treating.

Monday October 24th was a beautiful hot day at 80 degrees before the snow storm came in the next day. I wanted to take full advantage of the beautiful day before the first October snow so we lucked out with a free day at Botanical Gardens. I had never been there before but my Mom was volunteering at the Gardens for Food Day so Phillip, Avery, and I all went down. Kyle met us down there and it was nice for him to help me. Avery found this globe that you could click buttons and it would turn to the Solar System, or and indepth look at Earth. We went inside the Rainforest Garden for a little while, had a quick picnic in Mitchell Hall, and then spent most of our time in the Children's Garden on top of the Parking Garage.
After the Gardens, we headed to the Zoo and met Phill there. We arrived about 4:30 pm which was the perfect time to arrive. The weather was gorgeous and not too hot. There were hardly any people, and the animals were all out! I mean animals that I very rarely see were all out in the open, wide awake and active. I'm kicking myself for not taking any pictures of the animals especially the rare ones to see. But we saw 2 red pandas, 2 tapirs, the hippo was out of the water eating, the rhino, the elephant, and many others. It was so fun to be at the Zoo with the perfect temperature, all the animals out, and no crowds!

Baby #2 is mobile! Phillip started army scooting at about 6 1/2 months, and now he is 7 1/2 months and is officially crawling. He started officially crawling on 10/6/11 and he is so excited to move. We went through his frustration stage where he would get mad and cry because he couldn't quite get it, and he'd get really mad if we left the room without him, but now he crawls all over the house and is even pulling himself up to a stand. He really wants to do stairs and will try to lift his leg to pull himself up but he isn't quite strong enough yet, but he loves to laugh and try.