* HALLOWEEN *

This Halloween our costumes came together at the last minute.  On Sunday afternoon (the 30th) we were busy creating.  Well mostly Mark, he always goes the extra mile for his costume.  I didn't, I found mine at the used clothing store Moon Zoom downtown Santa Cruz.  All I had to come up with was Dorothy's ruby slippers.  Mark had some red spray paint left over from some job and I bought a bottle of red glitter and voila my gold heels are now ruby slippers!  Leland's warm costume came from the Little People's store in Scotts Valley.

We headed downtown for dinner at Hula's to celebrate Brenda's birthday then on to the informal parade down Pacific Avenue.  We felt famous, everyone wanted to take our photo or be in a photo with us.  It was fun for a while, until our cheeks hurt from smiling.  We've already started tossing around ideas for next year... though I'm sure we wont get started making the costumes until the last minute.

Here we are with Glenda the good witch and the wicked witch of the east.

Here we are with a wicked witch, the scarecrow and a flying monkey.

We even stumbled across the gate keeper to Oz!

* Firsts *

How fitting to write about Leland's "firsts" on November 1st. 

(Where did the entire month of October go???) 

Since the last post Leland has has his FIRST taste of real food.  He is enjoying rice cereal, pureed carrots, broccoli, sweet potatoes and banana.  He LOVES to eat, he wants anything that his daddy & I are eating and when you feed him, you can't shovel the food in fast enough.  He had his FIRST drink of water from a sippy cup.  He can roll and scoot and maneuver anywhere he wants to.  He hasn't quite made it to his FIRST crawl, but he gets up on hands and knees and rocks quite often.  At 6 months old he broke the 12 lb. mark by 1 oz.  He had his FIRST Halloween yesterday!  I'll blog about that tomorrow.  I'm afraid if I don't record these firsts somewhere I may never remember them.