Finnegan Wakes

We've had a great time celebrating Halloween with the boys this year. On Friday, we met up with a bunch of the parents and tots in my mom's group for a group photo/costume appreciation party, and then we all headed up to Lincoln Ave. for the yearly costume parade and trick-or-treats at the local shops. Dad-o joined in the fun this year, and escorted San Jose's smallest but most earnest luchador while I carried our little lion Henry around in the sling.

This evening Dad-o took Finny around to the neighbors' houses for some trick-or-treating while Henry and I stayed home and started doling out candy to the early bird ghosts and goblins. Then John and Finny manned the front steps to hand out candy to the hordes of kids coming down our block while I got Henry to sleep. Then we swapped and I doled out candy in my Lucy Ricardo costume while a super-pooped Finny chose to bypass his nightly bath and bottle in favor of just getting quickly into bed. Once both guys were down, we handed out the rest of our candy, ordered a pizza, and collapsed on the couch! We counted over 300 trick-or-treaters, and only have about 3 pieces of candy left in the cauldron.

Here's a little gallery (HTML) of Halloween pics and a few other assorted shots from recent days, including a visit from MrsW ("Hoot's mama!"), provider of quality luchador-wear.

[Super Mega Bonus Edition: It's fun to see pix of Finn at Halloween just a year ago (HTML), as well as to see a clip of his penguin-clad toddling! --J.]

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When it rains, it pours... gourds, that is.

Margot learned of another great pumpkin patch in our vicinity, so yesterday we packed up the Ocho & headed south. Finn, who's now officially a huge fan of Thomas the Tank Engine, got a kick out of the "leetle train!!" (particularly the water tower) and the random forklift that kept passing by. Henry was resplendent in pumpkin paraphernalia (check out the stem!), and Finn loved his "Boo shirt." Here's our gallery (HTML).

Posted by The Nack Daddy at 10:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

While Grandma Nack was here this week, we visited a local pumpkin patch with the boys. Henry was asleep for most of it, but at least he was dressed festively in his orange hat :D. Finn, on the other hand, was quite alert, and really enjoyed the small petting zoo that was set up at the patch. He was pretty taken with the turkeys, goats, piglets, and bunny rabbits. Here is a little gallery (HTML) of the afternoon's proceedings. We ended up with four pumpkins, two large and two tiny, to be our family doppel-gourds on the front porch.

[Just for fun, here's the gallery from last year's visit. What a tiny Finnster we had! --J.]

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We refer to our friend Maria as "Maria-upon-Hallmark" due to her employer (and to distinguish her from my boss Maria). As you might imagine, Maria (-upon-Hallmark) is a master card-sender, and she recently sent Finn a Candy Corn-infused greeting. I snapped a few frames of him opening it (HTML), while Margot captured him trying to feed it to me (one of his new tricks). A careful observer can see how much gnawing he'd done by that point. :-)

Meanwhile Mom captured our flightless-but-cute buddy going on his very own March of the Penguin on Halloween:

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Today marks Finn's first Halloween! Though he's too young for candy, he's definitely up for sporting a cute penguin costume and being strolled around town by his parents. All the shops along our neighborhood's main street take part in a big Halloween trick-or-treat event, so we got Finn suited up and ready to show off. Margot strolled him down to Lincoln Ave., where they were met by at least a few thousand parents and their costumed children.

The orange Bob made a perfect penguinmobile, and they wove their way through sidewalks choked with pirates, Elmos, ladybugs, princesses, monkeys, lions, tigers, and bears--oh my! (There were even a couple of Dorothys and Scarecrows.) Our Finny was the only penguin on parade and got many compliments on his soft, fuzzy outfit. Margot and Finn ran into our friends Mira & Anja (dressed as a strawberry), and Heidi & Liam (a sock monkey). Here are some pics (HTML) from the day.

Soon we'll be facing the onslaught of trick-or-treaters that descend on our neighborhood every year. We're stocked with 400 pieces of candy, so hopefully no one will go home empty-handed!

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We took Finn out to a local pumpkin patch this weekend, to see what he'd think of all the enormous orange gourds amidst the hay bales. Since he'd just awoken from a nap (to coordinate our outing with our neighbors Long, Suzanne, and their 8-week old daughter Madison), he was pretty spaced out most of the time.

Check out the photo gallery (HTML) and you'll see that he certainly gave Fat Albert a run for his money. If he could speak, he would definitely have said "Hay hay hay!," while he tried to poke handfuls of the stuff into his mouth. And having experimented unsuccessfully with eating a lone Cheerio the other day, Finn decided to cut out the middleman, eating whole grains right off the sheaf. John says our little hayseed is really going against the grain (ba-dum, tssch!).

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