Iowa Trip - November 2010

In November we made our annual Iowa football trip... This time Charlie was along for the ride. We headed in to town in the wee hours of Friday morning and were lucky enough to spend a little time with Charlie's favorite Dubuque friend, Landon. Zach and Angie came out for a visit and the boys had too much fun. Charlie is naked because he had been in the same pj's at this point for 24 hours. Needed to breath.

Rolling around...

So we packed the car up Saturday morning and caravanned down to Iowa City. The whole Neumann clan tailgated together this year to celebrate an early Thanksgiving. Aunt Monica rode in our car and did a great job of entertaining in the back seat. It was a chilly day to say the least but Charlie did great.

All ready for the game.

With Great Grandpa Gordie

He loved playing in the hotel and slept so well after all that activity. This is the weekend Charlie really started walking as well. He is on the move!

Halloween

Charlie had a fun fun Halloween weekend. We had an outdoor kid party on Saturday, hosted by the Russell family that was the perfect way to kick off our festive weekend. There were some pretty clever costumes and lots of things to do. Charlie wore his giraffe costume, and thank goodness - since I am pretty sure he grew out of it on Monday! He ate two pieces of pizza and had a whole halloween cookie on his own! Next year will be so fun when we can participate in all the fun activities the Russells provided!

Scurrying for candy ...

Washing down our cookie

With Scott, our gracious and bodacious host...

Saturday night we stayed in and carved pumpkins...

Charlie was so good at cleaning them out!

And then just banging on the inside with his spoon!

Sunday morning when we all finally crawled out of bed... I made pumpkin pancakes for breakfast and we went for a long walk. Our neighborhood was already a buzz.. Halloween is huge around here. Our neighbors host an annual Halloween party with around 80 families invited. We knew it was going to be a big day, so we put Charlie down for a nap a little early... we had a party to attend at four as well... Well, he slept right through it and woke up just in time for Anna Claire and William to get to the house for trick or treating. I made a big pot of chili and Josh started ribs on the Big Green Egg that morning at seven so we had lots of good eats. A few other friends stopped by and we spent the night back and forth to the Feurbachers and around the neighborhood. We easily had a few hundred trick or treaters, hard to count since a few of my candy passer outers were into the red wine.... ha ha!

Halloween Morning.... spooky

My Big Boy standing up

Love that smirk, eating his first PB&J

My mom found this costume and had to have it for Charlie... it was the fluffiest yellow duck you have ever seen... he would reach for it every time we opened his closet to snuggle it.

I love his expressions in these pics. What a ham!

Charlie and I got the wagon out and he and William did some trick or treating.. Charlie and I only hit about four houses. Enough to snag our first Milky Way (which I let him have that night) and a few fun size bags of M&M's which he has since polished off!