Party and the Ghosts of Halloween Past...

Last Saturday night McKenzie and I attended her second Halloween party. Last year Matt and I took her along with us to a party we attended. She was really well behaved and just fell asleep shortly after arriving. It was a much different story this year! There were other babies, some three-year-old girls and best of all dogs in costume. There couldn't be a much better party than that!

Here's McKenzie dressed as Piglet. She is going to be a dog on Halloween but that costume fits a bit weird so she dressed for comfort on Saturday. She is loving her dog friend Muki who has appeared in other blog entries with her.


The other girls that were there were a bit older than her and they were running all around and had taken their shoes off. McKenzie saw this as her opportunity to help out. Here she is doing one of her favorite things - bringing people their shoes. The girls just yelled 'that baby is stealing our shoes...'.


Here's some pictures from past Halloweens. First McKenzie and me last year all dressed up as a monkey and a banana. Who would have thought I'd get to wear the monkey costume twice!


Then Matt and me as King Kong and the Empire States Building!


And probably the greatest couples Halloween costume ever - the Teletubbies!


Followed by the classic double couple costume from Dad's weekend in college. Sprout and the Jolly Green Giant along with some bags of frozen Green Beans and Sweet Peas.
And my all time favorite... Little Bird.


And a classic from Matt's childhood... Little Red Riding Hood and Dracula!


And who could forget the 'Bud Girls'... was there not sun in Pullman???


I could actually include more but I'll restrain myself before anyone gets too scared!

What's In A Name?

So we've had a lot of people asking what we are naming Baby Z and while we are no closer to a name for our baby boy we have had quite a few laughs over things we won't be naming him.

Matt's cousin Cassandra loaned us a baby naming book that has lists of names including everything from Reality TV Stars to Truck Drivers - lots of winners there.

Have you ever read the 'L' or 'M' boy sections of a baby naming book? Half the names in these sections are combo names such as two of my favorites... Leeron, a clever combo of Lee and Ron, wow I never would have guessed that. Marshawn, a combo of Mark and Shawn.

Or there's the long name that is shortened such as William Joseph or James Robert by calling him Willy Joe or Jim Bob.

In today's world you have to think of things such a email addresses, account logins and things when naming a child. Do you want them to always be explaining to people why their corporate email is different than the name they want to be called? Or worst having all the good email addresses always taken because they are the tenth person with the same name so they are stuck with being john.zaremba8272@gmail.com

Another new trend in baby naming is to give the child a unique spelling of a basic name such as Jayson (Jason) or Baley (Bailey).

Today I saw a posting on a baby board that I read that topped them all. It opened a whole new realm of of naming possibilities up to us. The name was 'Le-a' so in your head you say okay that's pronounced 'Lee-ahhh' but no... try again. 'Ladasha' and then this one requires the babies mom to step in and add and I quote 'that dash don't be silent'.

Wow. I had a good laugh over that one. Now I have seen the names with the addition of a 'La' or a 'De' on the front of a different name or in the case of someone getting fancy just a D' or putting two names together with a '-' but never the use of the '-' to give the sound of 'dash'. Now we're getting crazy - that opens up a whole realm of names I don't even want to think about. There are so many symbols on the keyboard with so many different sounds associated with them. Though I do like to joke that D'Matthew has a nice ring to it... D'Matt for short.

So the answer to what are we naming our baby boy is nothing yet... but we are still searching! Let us know if you think of anything good or anything too funny not to share - we're open to hearing both!

Crush 2008!

This past weekend was the fourth annual Crush Festival over in Chelan, which I celebrated with some of the members of my wine club. We had a fantastic time as usual - this year we had Rachel, Misty, Kate, Lindley, McKenzie and me! It was a great group and a good time was had by all. The Crush Festival is really the first two weekends of October but after last year when we had some scheduling issues that kept us from going during the official time we decided we much preferred to be on our own rather than have to deal with crowds.

This year we skipped the limo since we only had five girls and I wasn't doing any tasting... just a lot of smelling of wine. We started our day with a personal yoga class in the park - thanks to Yoga Chelan! It was so beautiful and relaxing to be out in the sunshine and to have the leaves falling all around us.


After yoga we headed back to my parents to get cleaned up and then we headed out on our wine tour. We made it to six wineries this year - not our personal best which was seven but still a good showing. We went to three new ones and three old favorites. Here's the ones we visited:

Rio Vista Wines: Just opened this year, located 10 minutes east of the town of Chelan. It has a beautiful tasting room overlooking the river with great atmosphere and really down to earth owners who were serving the wine. We're looking forward to seeing what's new there next year. Here's a picture of us on their back deck.



Four Lakes Wines: Another new winery since our visit last year. They are also a family affair complete with a set of dogs - one boxer and the biggest friendliest rottweiler any of us had ever seen. Their current tasting room was designed for production only and they are working on building out a tasting room at a new location for next year. They will have a view of all four lakes in the area from their tasting room. In the meantime our group always enjoys seeing the process of wine making so we love a tasting room / production facility. Here we are at at Four Lakes.


Karma Vineyard: Our next stop was one we discovered last year, Karma Vineyard - one of our favorite for their great atmosphere, fun owners and great wine and cheese! We did the tour again with owner Julie because it's always a good show and we learned a little more than last year. They have released their champagne this year which was quite impressive to those who tried it! Here are the girls at Karma with a picture of an old lady with a cat - I'm not a cat lady so I got to take the picture!


Chelan Estates: The fact that I didn't find an actual website for this winery and had to put a link to a Washington State wine guide sums up this winery. The girls said their wine was fine but they lacked the things we love - great atmosphere and people to share their wine story with us. We will mark this off our list for a revisit.

Vin du Luc: Another old favorite, this is the only winery we have visited all four years. It almost didn't make the cut year two after our first year experience left something to be desired. We felt the staff on the first year was rude and the appetizer plates we ordered were lacking - not in taste or quality but in actual food. We only returned the second year for the wines and great labels - that's another of our weaknesses - we love good labels on the bottles. Our second year experience and the two years since have been great and will keep us heading back year after year.

Lake Chelan Winery: Another favorite that we have been to the past three years, they boast not only great wine, great staff but a fantastic gift shop and a fantastic BBQ! This year they have added Hard Cider to their list of beverages so bottles of that were purchased to take home to the boys. No report yet on how they liked it!

The last two years we have done the BBQ but this year we opted to try the new Thai restaurant in town and we weren't disappointed. Nothing is better than family style thai food after a long day!

As usual on Sunday morning we did a photo shoot with our bottles of wine here are a couple of shots from that.






You're probably wondering what the star of this blog - McKenzie - was doing this whole time that we were running around from winery to winery. She was entertaining Grandma and Grandpa C. They had a great time together and wore each other out going for walks, looking at bunnies and climbing up and down the stairs. Grandma and Grandpa had fun strolling McKenzie around downtown showing her off to their friends.



Here's McKenzie at lunch on Sunday - this just proves that she eats most anything. I'm not sure pickles are on the list of foods typically enjoyed by babies but that doesn't stop McKenzie!



And here she is jumping in that pile of fall leaves as promised in an earlier post.

Making Memories...

This past Saturday was a whole bunch of firsts for McKenzie. We got to meet the newest member of the family - sweet baby Olivia. Matt's cousin Cassandra and her husband Chris are Olivia's very proud parents. We are looking forward to our gang of girls growing up together - first there's McKenzie then a year later cousin Claire and then just a few short months later Olivia. When she first saw Olivia, McKenzie put out her arms and made some grunting noises that clearly indicated to me "Give me that baby." She didn't get to hold Miss Olivia but McKenzie did get to give her some loves which was too cute. We'll wait until Olivia has seen a little more of the world before we let McKenzie loose with her.



After meeting Olivia we hurried off to a wedding for one of Matt's co-workers that was also in Seattle. It was a really pretty wedding and McKenzie did really good during the ceremony and only yelled out once in reply to another baby. There were lots of babies in attendance so it was a lively wedding. After that we went to the reception where McKenzie went a little wild - not in a meltdown state but just overwhelming excitement at being around so many people. She was smiling and dancing and jumping all over. We lasted there about an hour and then we realized that we were not getting fed more that appetizers anytime soon so we headed out to grab some dinner on our own.

Here's Matt and McKenzie all dressed up waiting for the wedding to begin. McKenzie loves phone or anything that might be a phone. She loves to put them to her head and rock it back and forth babbling. Sometimes she gets out a really clear 'Hi'.

The Great Pumpkin!

This weekend we also made it out to an actual pumpkin patch - not just a grocery store display like last year. We had a great time at Bob's Corn and Pumpkin Farm yesterday with lots of our friends. We were joined by Gina, Atticus, Carrie, Chad, Kaden, Mikelle, Halle, Aunt Jennifer, Uncle Chris, cousin Claire and her Grandma Pat who is visiting from Wisconsin. It was quite a crew of kids and we all got some great pumpkins!

McKenzie really loved the farm as there were dogs running about and she actually got to ride on a pony! She wasn't sure what to think at first and had a death grip on Matt and me who were walking on either side of her. After a bit she got used to it and let Matt walk away to take some pictures. When we were done she was able to pet the pony and then she got really excited - it was just a huge dog as far as she was concerned.



After the pony ride McKenzie got to swing in a tire hollowed out to form a nice little swing. Then all our friend arrived and we loaded into the tractor and rode down to the pumpkin patch. We were thinking of doing the corn maze but then found out it took an hour to make it through and since everyone had little kids we decided to save that for another year. We headed into the pumpkin patch in search of the perfect pumpkins. We were able to find three perfect pumpkins, one big, one medium and one small. I've never been to a pumpkin patch where pumpkins weren't just sitting out on the bare dirt waiting for you to pick on. At this pumpkin patch you really had to search for your pumpkin. Here's a picture of the group searching in the field.

Matt and McKenzie hunting for pumpkins - the ground was a bit bumpy for McKenzie in the pumpkin patch so hitching a ride made it a lot easier.

McKenzie found a good one!

Now two!


After we picked out our pumpkins and saw how big they were, we decided the best way to get them back to the tractor was with a wheelbarrow. Here's a couple of cute pumpkins - cousin Claire and McKenzie - catching a ride!

The weather was great especially after the rain that we've been having around here so it turned out to be a great day!

Enjoying the Fall

I love Fall, despite the fact that I cling stubbornly to the end of Summer as long as possible. I do really love Fall. The autumn colors, the leaves, cooking comfort foods, the gradual slow down in the pace of life are all things I enjoy about Fall. We have been gearing up for the season by breaking out the Fall decorations and purchasing McKenzie's first pair of rubber boots. Here's McKenzie's list of things she has been enjoying this Fall.

McKenzie modeling her new boots. She is still not 100% on walking in them but she does love to put them on. She also has a matching rain coat that is quite cute!



McKenzie has always been a good eater. She will try most anything and will eat about 90% of what she tries. Her all time favorite though is corn - on the cob if possible! She's been enjoying the last few ears of summer and we just discovered frozen corn cobs. We'll post her official review after we give those a try!



McKenzie has also been enjoying some good naps this Fall. Here is a rare moment for McKenzie - not since she was about three months old has she taken a nap outside her crib, pack-n-play or the car seat. We had been out doing a little shopping and then stopped in at a park to play for a bit then came home for some lunch. McKenzie fell asleep in the car and then I brought her into the house thinking she'd wake up but she didn't. So I just laid her down and let her sleep. The dogs didn't know what to think - they've never seen her not moving...



More Fall fun to come! I'm sure we'll be jumping in a pile of leaves sometime soon!