california trip: newport beach and halloween

we recently got back from a long, much-needed trip to california. we filled our week and a half with lots of family time and fun activities. so this post is the first of a multi-part series :)

when we first arrived, we just hung out in pasadena at my parent's house for a couple of days. and, as promised, my parents took will to the build-a-bear store to make his very own stuffed toy. i've never been in that place, and it was a riot. especially entertaining was the worker there helping us. because it was just a couple of days before halloween, he was dressed up in his costume: a salt with a deadly weapon. weird. he was dressed in a giant salt costume, but didn't have his weapon because it wasn't appropriate at his work. he was pretty funny. anyway, william chose to make a monkey and dressed it in lightening mcqueen jammies, and even named him "money mkeen" (which is how he says monkey mcqueen). it was pretty cute and a fun outing for all of us.

on the saturday morning after we arrived, peter and my dad began their week of bonding (more on that in another post). they donned their cycling gear, and took their bikes down to montrose to join the weekly local pelaton ride. it was a 40ish mile bike ride with about 80 riders. and they are hardcore--averaging 27 mph. peter had a blast and i'm glad he and my dad could get out and ride in some nice weather.

on sunday, my parents, peter, will, and i drove down to newport beach (where we stayed in the marriott villas for a few days) and cort, kim, and their kids, and whitney, and wade, and their kids joined us for little kate's family birthday party. it was fun for all of the cousins to get together. and when they are together, they are WILD. and i mean really wild. but they're all so cute and we had a fun night.

the view from our hotel room:

cute kate and emmy:

weston, holding money mkeen:

kate, sampling her birthday cake:

little parker, just exploring the place:

with monday being halloween, we made the last few pieces of our halloween costumes and then drove down to laguna niguel to cort and kim's to celebrate and go trick-or-treating with them. cort's neighborhood gets very, very festive, so it was pretty entertaining to walk around and see all the elaborate decorations and meet the neighbors. some of the neighbors were even having a little chili cook-off, so we were able to sample chili (and even tequila shots at some houses if we'd been so inclined) as we took the little munchkin around. okay, well, when i say "we", i mean, peter, cort, kim, and our parents because even since i was pregnant with will i can't eat chili. that's another story. a gross one, so i won't share. anyway, trick-or-treating with william for the first time was a blast. he was totally enamored by the fact that he could just walk around and collect candy. he was very cute though, thanking the neighbors and holding onto mom and dad's hands.

so, our plan was to dress up as a family of garden gnomes, however, william apparently had a different agenda . . . he REFUSED to put on his beard and hat. this is the closest we got:

finally, we gave in and put him in his skeleton jammies. and he was much happier. mostly because they're comfy, he won the battle, and because he loves yelling, "skeleton BONES!" and it was cute because little parker and annie were dressed to match.

here we are strolling down the street. don't mind the fact that peter's and my costumes make us look like we're about 100 pounds overweight . . .

the cute little cort townsend family. every year, cort wears pretty much the same costume and just rotates between being indiana jones and a cowboy. this year he kept saying "there's a snake in my boot" all night long, so i guess he was dressed as woody? i don't know. but his little fairy princess and two little skeletons sure were cute :) thanks for letting us hang out with you guys on halloween!