Happy Birthday (and Halloween)...

 Hard to believe we have a four year old running around now.  We had her party again at the Little Gym, and she had a lot of fun running and jumping and dancing around with her friends who showed up (and for all you kids at Whistle Stop...you're officially on notice.)  This year we let her choose what theme she wanted for the cake and decorations.  Princess theme?  No way.  Cars of course.  Lightning McQueen is practically a member of  our family at this point.  Though if the current pace continues Sully and Mike from Monsters Inc may soon take his spot.  

On Sunday we went out for ice cream so that she could pay for it herself from her new piggy bank.  As the girl behind the counter walked back and forth to help someone else Riley followed from the other side of the counter...back and forth...very anxious to hand over her money from her Hello Kitty coin purse for her scoop of chocolate.  After that it was off to the toy store to pick out a few more toys, with her doing the selecting.  We told her she could choose any two.  The first one she picked absolutely screams "Riley":  A bright, sparkly, pink Hello Kitty purse.  Definitely.  The next one was her own Riley-sized broom and dust pan so that she can help keep the house clean (we may be on to something here).  

Going back a couple of weeks, it was trick or treat time.  I was a bit bummed for a while thinking I was going to miss this one due to a work trip, but fortunately I was able to miss that and enjoy the festivities.  Seriously, I can not imagine the pounds of candy we would come home with if we went through our entire neighborhood.  Like last year, we went down two sides of only one street, plus a couple extra houses on our street and both of their pumpkins were full.  We may have a good head start on buying candy for next Halloween.  Who am I kidding...with Mr candy-obsessed Jackson it will be gone in a month.  Speaking of Jackson, he caught on pretty quickly after watching Riley take the lead.   As he walked down the side walk he said "candy!" over and over.  If she got too far ahead of him though he wouldn't walk up to the door on his own so she or we would have to carry him up.

Unfortunately the part of the evening she seemed to be looking forward to the most didn't work out so well.  Since we were out a bit later ourselves this year, that meant we missed almost all of the trick-or-treaters at our house.  Seeing the kids come to our door and giving them candy is definitely her favorite part of the night, or at least it seems that way.  We had one...only one...come to the door before she had to go to bed.  Fortunately we still had the porch light on because within 5 minutes of her going to bed the bell rang and she bolted out of her room and to the front door so that she could give out the candy.  So next year we've got to plan ahead and head out a little earlier I suppose.  

The next few weeks should be very busy ones between Thanksgiving, Christmas play at their school, Jackson's Birthday, and of course Christmas.  So Billy B...you can rest easily knowing there are plenty of blog posts to look forward to.  :)

  

 

(He walked into the room wearing this)