This weekend was so much fun!  I had a photo session with an awesome little 5 month old saturday morning and then we hung out with B until we headed over to my dad’s to celebrate mine and my sister’s birthday.  The kids spent the night at my mom’s house and it was absolute bliss to sleep in until 9 am this morning!

Tyson had an exciting weekend as well.  His Grandpa Murray spoils him rotten when it comes to the MN Wild (and MANY other things!)  He got to go watch them practice Saturday morning and while there, he met his absolute, #1, favorite hockey player, #96, Pierre-Marc Bouchard!

Apparently PMB said to Ty “Would you like to have my stick from practice?”

Tyson: “No, thanks, I already have one”

Stunned Grandpa: “Um…where did you get it?”

Tyson: “Dick’s Sporting Goods”

LMAO.  Classic Tyson.  Thanks for thinking of me PMB, but I’m all set…you can keep yours…

Meanwhile, back in reality, B was enjoying having Tony and I all to herself.  It’s so interesting how different she is when Ty isn’t around.  I know she misses him, but she enjoys being left alone and getting to play with whatever she’d like.

Hope you all enjoyed the weekend!

If you know Tyson at all, you’ll know he has a true love for hockey.  He loves anything and everything about it, he plays it for hours on end on his “hockey rink” (aka — our dining room floor) and never gets sick of watching it either.  However, there’s always been one thing standing in his way from actually playing real hockey.  The ice.  Skating on the ice.

Granted, he’s only 5 years old now, but here in MN, they start them young.  Like 3 years old.

I have to be honest, I really am not all that trilled about the prospect of being a “hockey mom”.  I don’t like to be cold, the hockey atmosphere is not something that I enjoy from a parental perspective.  IMO, it’s all just a bit too competitive where we live.  But, my son wants to play it, and therefore I must put my feelings aside for him and let him at least attempt this sport that he adores.

Back to the ice.  The boy can’t skate.  He’s normally very athletically inclined, but his one hang up is on skates.  We put him in skating lessons for the first time last winter and he was a hot mess!  Falling all over the place, in tears.  I was actually beginning to be hopeful that skating might save me from the fate of the Hockey Mom.  :-)  So, we only did one session and packed up the skates.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, talk of hockey and skating resurfaced in our house (thanks to the the MN Wild games being back) and he tells me he wants to try it again.  So, I looked up our local Learn to Skate program here in our new town and signed him up.  He got pretty good at rollerblading over the summer, so I thought maybe with not only that, but the fact that he’s just bigger and more coordinated now, would help him to not get as frustrated by it.

Last night was the first night.  His excitement was enough to make me forget about my Hockey Mom woes and it was so cute watching him observe over the edge of the boards the class finishing up before us.  He had his skates on about 23 minutes before his class even started, he just could.not.wait!

Finally, the whistle blew and all the little ones lined up in their bike helmets and snow pants took to the ice.  I wasn’t sure how it would all go down.

I should have known better though because he got right out there and headed straight across the ice for his group.  He nearly fell a few times, but recovered nicely and made it to the wall without falling!

I proudly watched from the bleachers as he slowly remembered how to do this whole skating thing and was SO proud at the bit of progress he made last night alone!  By the end of the 30 minute class, he was going backwards and doing Swizzles!

I took a couple of little videos of him because I thought it would be fun to document him now and then again at the end of the session, so here they are.  He’s in the dark gray coat with green and has a bike helmet on.  He has a LONG way to go before he’s the next Pierre Marc Bouchard, but at least we’ve made a bit of progress since our last skating adventure!

Even though school has been in session for a couple of months already, I still can’t believe my baby boy is in Kindergarten.  He is LOVING it and really thriving and making so many new friends and learning new things.

A few brags (these are mostly for my documentation so I don’t forget in a few years!)

He was asked to be a part of his class’ Advanced Reading Group!  It’s 3–4 of his classmates that get together with a teacher every Monday and work on their reading and writing skills.  We’re *so* proud of him and are amazed by his smarts every day!

The other “brag” is that he was chosen as one of the students for the month of September that exemplifies the trait of Responsibility.  We got a really nice note from his teacher as to why he was chosen and he had his photo taken with the other “responsible” students with their principle, Mr. Guthrie.

Needless to say…school is off to a great start!

I posted some photos from his first day over on my Ten Tiny Toes Blog, so you can see them here.

Tony also took some video of him getting on the school bus (obviously Daddy needs to work on his video skills), such a bittersweet Mommy moment!  **in case you can’t see him, he’s the one with the blue backpack with the giant tag hanging on it**

We’re back and ready to rock & roll! It’s been a whirlwind of a summer for us and the fall is equally as busy.  I might try and play catch up, I might not. I haven’t decided quite yet.  ;-)

I thought I would start with a Halloween post.  We were very excited for Halloween this year in our new neighborhood.  At our old house, we would maybe have 30 or so kids and go through about 2 bags of candy.  But the kids in that ‘hood were mostly older elementary age.

But, in our new ‘hood there are a LOT of young families (definitely our favorite thing!) and so we were hopeful that it would be a bit busier.  Well, be careful what you wish for!  We went through TEN bags of candy!!!  It was insane!  The sidewalks were lined with families and cute little kiddos in their costumes and many of the houses were decorated in all their Halloween glory with candy distributors hanging on the front porch.

I think we hit up about 30 houses with the kids, we also had some of our friends over for a small Halloween Party.  The weather was actually quite nice, not too windy and only about 40 degrees, so it was one of our nicer Halloweens (I was a bride the year of the 1991 Halloween Blizzard!)

Bon Jovi

Of course one of the best parts of Halloween is the costumes!  Gone are the days where Tyson lets me choose his costume, so I was very sure when I asked him back in July what he wanted to be, that he was going to say “Batman” or some other commercial character.  But, like he usually does, he surprised me when he said he wanted to be Jon Bon Jovi!  How many five year olds actually know who Bon Jovi even is?  Well, ours has a poster of them up in his room! LOL

So, Bon Jovi he was, and it was so fun to come up with his costume.  I found this great kids faux leather jacket, circa 1980’s and we threw on a pair of skinny jeans and Chucks.  Then we had to figure out the hair.  Because we were going to for the old school rocker Bon Jovi style.  So, I found a kids Mullet’ish wig (which is not an easy task I might add!) and gave it a good trim with some layers and poofed up the top a bit.  Now, I will say, he did look a bit like George Washington with the wig, but it kind of worked out.  :-P

I took a few shots of him up in my studio when I was playing with some off camera flash the other day, these are minus the wig, but I still love them and wanted to share

Hello GQ!

Here are some shots of him in action Trick or Treating.  I made a Bon Jovi playlist and put it on my iPod so he could have a little soundtrack playing.  That seemed to be a big hit with the adults giving out candy!  And then every so often, he would randomly bust out and start singing along, it was so funny!

Here he is busting a move in someone’s driveway, LOL

Tricks or treats?

The T-o-T’ing clan (Bailey was there too, but in the stroller)

Olivia the Pig

If you aren’t familiar with Olivia the Pig, you’re totally missing out!  She is the character in a popular children’s book series and there is also now a show about her on Nick Jr.  Bailey is in LOVE with her.  She lovingly refers to her as “Ee Ah”.  I got the idea for her to be Olivia after we bought her a little stuffed Olivia and she was so excited about it.  But, the problem is that there aren’t really any commercial Olivia costumes out there, so I had to get a bit creative.

I decided to make her a red velvet dress myself, had to dust off the old sewing machine.  I bought a pattern from this Etsy shop and it was actually pretty easy to make the dress!  I might have to make her another one at some point too, I was really happy with how it turned out!  I ended up finding some striped leggings and then this shop on Etsy had Olivia pig ears on a headband and the collar.

So, here she is in all her Ee-Ah glory!  She really loved it once she saw herself in the mirror and realized that she was Olivia.  I might try and get it on her again at some point to take some studio shots of her too.

We had to bring Oliva with us trick or treating as well (total accident that the stroller matched too! LOL)

Ee-Ah managed to sneak into big brothers candy too…yeah, things are SO different with your 2nd child!

Hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween!

It’s probably been at least 10 years since I have gone rollerblading. Tyson got his first pair of rollerblades for his birthday (and some awesome pads and wrist guards too, thank goodness!). It did NOT go well when he first put them on him. He was scared out of his mind and held onto us for dear life. But, we tried again a few days later and I had remembered what they had taught them to do in his ice skating lessons, about standing with their hands on their knees and bent down. And sure, enough, it worked! He felt more and more secure, and before we knew it, he was cruising (slowly) down the sidewalk!

Little by little he’s getting better at it and he LOVES it. Brings back so many memories! So many in fact, that I dusted off my old rollerblades and took to the streets. I’ll spare you the details on how that went, but let’s just say my life did flash before my eyes just before I hit the pavement.