Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy halloween in your neck of the woods! This year was no different for the Grunwald's in Oregon - short! We were fortunate that it didn't pour on us, the weather was actually quite nice. Jae was Optimus Prime and Hannah was Hedwig (the owl from Harry Potter, also Jae's costume when he was 1.5).

The kids had a great time going from house to house but as usual, Jae was tired by about block 3 (He's just not a walker, plus his mask was starting to bother him). Hannah was a trooper and kept up with him until about block 2 and started getting tired (she almost fell asleep while I was carrying her, but all the excitement from the other kids distracted her). The kids still made out with a good stash of candy. We came back to hand out candy, but only got a handful of visitors, so now we've got a bucket of chocolate hanging around the house! This is not a good thing.

Hope everyone is doing well!!!
Patty, Bill, Jae, and Hannah Grunwald


This is a picture of Jae wearing the owl costume (just for a quick comparison). He's growing up so fast!

Trick-or-Treat!

As Jae would say, "trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat, if you don't, I don't care, I'll pull down your underwear!"

The usual crew gathered at the house, aunties, uncles, and grandparents. We had some corned beef and cabbage (on Halloween?) and of course, LOTS of candy!

This year, Jae was a fireman and Hannah was a bear. Pretty darn cute if you ask me.

We left the house without eating dinner (big mistake) and started on our journey of collecting candy. Halloween was shortlived this year, for two reasons.

1. A lot of homes did not have their porchlight on.

2. Hungry Jae = cranky pants Jae = I'm done

Usually, the whole street is lit with lights, but this year, half of the street was dark. We are thinking it's because Halloween fell on a Friday and most families had places to go since there was no school the next day. So we ended up skipping a lot of homes and ventured out a little farther. Along the way, there was a lot of cajoling to say "trick or treat" and "thank you" and constantly picking up the fireman hat that kept falling onto the ground, and telling Jae to go to this and that house. All the while, carrying a sleeping bear (Hannah fell asleep within 10 min of being out). At one point, Jae starts taking off his hat, his head protector, and his glow in the dark stick and starts walking back to our house. We ask him if he's done and he's like, "yes, I'm done". We were kind of surprised, but I think the lack of food and the walking made him tired and cranky.

We finally get home and take our picture at the door and go inside for some grub. Jae eats a little of the corned beef, but then wants candy! He eats a little more than I'd like, but it's once a year, he'll never get to gorge himself like this until next Halloween.

Well, now that he's in, he's the candy helper. Whenever the doorbell rings, he's right there handing out candy. The little trick or treaters must have LOVED Jae, because his idea of handing out candy was taking two FULL handfuls of candy! You should have heard some of the kids and parents..they were like "wow, that's a lot of candy!" I guess it's a good thing for us, less in our house!

We turned off our lights at 8:30 and proceeded to enjoy a somewhat quiet evening. Jae was a little jacked up on sugar, so he didn't get to sleep until 10 and Hannah ended up waking up a couple of times during the night.

Overall, it was another great halloween. It was Hannah's first and she slept through it all! Next year should be fun when she can walk.

Happy Halloween!