Halloween at the Mall of America

Happy Halloween!! We got to spend Halloween this year at the Mall of America in Minnesota. We had a superhero halloween. Cooper was Spiderman, and Jaxton was Batman. We got good use out of our costumes this year for Halloween events, as well as pretending to be superheros at home. Almost every day they get dressed up in their costumes!!

We went to dinner with the Routsong families at the mall. It was a lot of fun spending time with all the cousins and Grandma & Grandpa. Mike & Kim Routsong have 7 kids, Jared, Cassidy, Katie, Lauren, Jack, Ryan, and Asher. Jaxton fell in love with Lauren the most out of all the cousins there. Lauren was such a big sister to him and he wanted to spend every waking moment with her if he could.

Cooper with Cousin Katie

Jaxton (Batman) and Cooper (Spiderman) with Asher (Woody from Toy Story), Cassidy, Katie, Jack (Harry Potter), Ryan (Jessie from Toy Story), and Lauren (Hermonie)

Ryan, Lauren & Batman

Cooper with Cassidy & Katie

The mall had a black light Halloween dance where Cooper got his groove on more than anyone else. He was having a blast moving around and wiggling to the loud booming music, which was a bit too loud for Jaxton's liking. It was fun to watch Cooper dance the night away!

Go Spiderman Go!

Here we are Trick-Or-Treating in the mall at different stores. The Trick-Or-Treating ended up being so chaotic with hundreds and hundreds of people and crowds, it was almost ridiculous! There were long lines up to certain stores, just to recieve a couple starburst or a sticker. Just masses of people everywhere. Often there would be rude people butting in the front of the lines just to get their sticker or piece of gum. I couldn't believe the amount of rude people, let along the number of massive crowds that just covered the biggest mall in America! Regardless, I think the boys had a great time!

The boys were infatuated with this shark. We kept seeing him a few times every day at the mall. He was advertising an aquarium museum that is located also inside the mall. When we found him on Halloween night, the boys wanted to give him a hug. so here they are hugging Mr. Shark.

Mall of America, Minnesota

During our vacation, we went to the Mall of America, which happens to be the largest mall in the United States. And yes, it is huge! There is an entire indoor amusement park in the center of it, and the mall makes a giant square all the way around the park, and goes up 4 levels in some areas. HUGE! Nobody loves the mall more than Nate; and if Jaxton could pick one of his favorite places to go, he would choose the mall as well. So our family enjoys the mall quite a bit, needless to say, a mall with every store imaginable was super exciting, and maybe a bit overwhelming! We certainly got our exercise in there. We decided to purchase 2 individual strollers from the mall so the boys wouldn't slow us down. They told us we needed to return them by 9:45pm, 15 minutes before the mall closed. So, since both boys needed a nap about halfway through the day, we just took the strollers back to our hotel with us, and then used them again at the mall that evening when we went to dinner with family. All in time before 9:45!

They had characters come out about every hour, so the boys were excited to see the wonderpets and spongebob. Though, Jaxton was a bit timid when spongebob came out and declined a picture with the giant strange looking creatures.

Shopping, shopping, shopping. We found one of our favorite stores, the Nordstrom Rack. They had some great deals!! But we are about worn out at this point. Well, maybe I should say the kiddos were having a blast, but Nate & I were worn out trying to keep them contained and happy in a store while we shopped!! Shopping with kids is not always a good idea!

They had all kinds of events and booths with vendors in one area, and the boys got to create a crown here. Jaxton put a sticker on every crown point, he was very particular. And they loved wearing their crowns around the mall!

Water Park of America

Nate's brother's family, Mike & Kim Routsong and their 7 kids, along with Nate's parents were taking a fun vacation to the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. They suggest we come along, and since we haven't had any getaways as a family since probably Christmas last year, we decided it was high time for some good family fun. So we booked a hotel and decided to go for it. It was about an 8 and a half hour drive. I was quite worried about that with the 2 boys. But they did excellent!! They really did not complain once. We watched movies, Jaxton colored about 12 pictures in the car, Cooper napped, we stopped for potty breaks every now and then (for 2 potty trained boys), and we made it!! The hotel was awesome! We had bunk beds inside our hotel room for the boys, that we could close off with a curtain. That way we could watch TV in bed and not disturb them. I've never heard of a hotel with bunk beds!!! We got a great deal on the room for some kind of Halloween special, so we got lucky there. Inside the hotel is a giant indoor water park. They had tons of water slides, a huge park with water spraying out every which way, toddler area, a swimming beach, and a lazy river. We all had a wonderful time!! I couldn't do a whole lot of water sliding; they recommended against it being 7 months pregnant, but I sure had fun just relaxing with the boys on the lazy river and swimming around at the beach. A plus for our trip was that our thermostat was not working properly in our room. It got down to 54 degrees at night and would not warm up! The hotel promptly refunded all our water park tickets to compensate for the inconvenience! That was about an $80 savings!! We had a great time!!

Pumpkin Patch & Apple Orchard

Jaxton's preschool group took a trip to a different Pumpkin Patch & Apple Orchard. The picture above has more siblings than actual preschool kids: Cameron Stump, Cooper, Jaxton, Kye Stump, Coby Stump, and Danielle Fey. The owner of the pumpkin patch let the kids pick one 50 cent pumpkin or gourd to take home. Cooper chose a mini white pumpkin, and Jaxton chose a green goblin egg.

Next we went down the road to an Apple Orchard. The apple picking season is over, but there were lots of apples on the ground to see, and in Cooper's case, to taste. He found the tiniest apple and he wanted to keep it so bad. So I let him take it home and when we got home, he was dying to cut it and eat it. Sounds sour to me, but what could it hurt? So we cut it up and he ate almost the whole thing!! Cute kid!

I love fall time!!

YMCA Halloween

This Halloween, we have a couple of Routsong Superheros!! Jaxton wanted to be Batman, and Cooper wanted to be Spiderman. I was going to make their costumes, but decided that being a beginning seamstress, my homemade costume would never really look as good as a store bought one. So, I found some inexpensive costumes in size 6X that looked awesome. (The toddler sized costumes always don't look as good). So I purchased them each a costume in 6X and went to work with the sewing machine to alter them to their sizes. So, I did get to kind of sew their costumes, even though I just altered them to fit. I added a batman symbol to the back of Jaxton's cape, and covered his fireman boots with black material to create tall batman boots. Cooper put his spiderman socks over the top of his shoes so he would have spiderman feet and I cut his mask which originally covered his entire face. He couldn't breath well and his snot was getting his mask all wet all the time because of his constant runny nose. So I cut it around his nose so it wouldn't bother him, and widened the eye holes so he could see, and he never wanted to take that mask off the entire evening!! The YMCA has a Halloween party every year where the kids get to play games to earn candy. So we spent the evening looking at all the cool costumes, playing games, and eating candy!

Here is Batman!!

And here is Spiderman!!!
Here are the superheros doing an obstacle course game in order to earn some candy.

Here they are playing hot potato with a pumpkin. There were lots of spidermans this evening, but I still think Cooper looked the best of all the spiderman want-a-be's!

Jaxton & Cooper ended up being the last 2 in the hot potato/pumpkin game. So they were passing it back and forth till the music stopped. Then they got to dig into the candy bowl!

In this game, Cooper is a mummy, and Jaxton is dressing the mummy. They have no idea what mummies are so I think they thought this game was a little strange, using toilet paper to wrap up in. It was funny to watch. Cooper volunteered to be the mummy, so Jaxton went to work to wrap him as best as his little 3 year old hands could do!

Then, they played "Put the stem on the Pumpkin." Cooper was quite a bit off, as was Jaxton. They both put the stem about 3 feet to the left of the pumpkin! Silly kiddos! They were blind and dizzy.

Here are the rewards they reaped tonight!! Buckets full of sugar!!

Little Wrestlers

So I grew up in a family full of girls. I don't remember one time that we wrestled for fun. If we wrestled, we would hit or pull hair because we were mad. So when my 2 boys started jumping on each other, pushing each other down, and pinning each other, I sent them to naughty time and tried to explain that we don't hit or push each other. That is not nice and we don't do that in our house. Well, I found myself trying to break them up all day long day after day, and then I noticed something profound: I noticed that they were laughing, not crying. They were actually enjoying themselves! They were not only enjoying themselves, they were having a blast!! What a realization!! I guess this is just the difference between girls and boys. This is what boys like to do! Having grown up with girls, I honestly had no idea that this is just what boys enjoy doing, so I was trying to stop them. But I have learned that they love it! They are just more physical, and thats how they enjoy playing together. So since my AHA moment, I have let them tackle each other. Once in a while one will end up scratched or squished, but after a moments cry, they are right back at it with smiles on their faces. And the two of them have truly bonded the last few months now that they are old enough to play well together. I guess I have a lot to learn about boys!!

Pumpkin Patch

We have a pumpkin patch just down the road from our house called Cedar Creek. It's the same place we go to pick strawberries and raspberries in the summertime. There was a giant blown up Halloween black cat tunnel that the boys were so excited about! Inside it played spooky Halloween music. So after posing under the giant cat, we went about to pick out our pumpkins.

After we had pumpkins for the four of us, Cooper ran to our wagon carrying a mini pumpkin and he announced that it was for the baby. How precious of him to think of his little baby sister that is still in Mommy's tummy! So of course we added it to our family wagon full of pumpkins!

Nate & the boys with our final pick of the crop!