Baby Ryan's Baptism

On Sunday we headed to Baby Ryan's baptism. Ryan is Kerry's brother's new son and he was born on August 27th. All the cousins have a 7 in their birth date.  Callie and Kristen both on August 7th and Carter on September 17th. The church is just a few blocks from our house and it's one of the nicer modern Churches I've been in.  It's part of the Catholic High School and has very high vaulted ceilings and is nice and bright. The ceremony included three other children but still went quickly. I get the sense that this is a pretty routine event for the priest now. Kerry looked after the kids while I took pictures where I could.

After the ceremony we headed over to Corey and Carmen's town house complex for lunch. They held it in the clubhouse and all of Carmen's family was there. The food was excellent and all the cousins had a great time playing together. Kristen really seems to enjoy playing with Callie and Carter and it's going to be chaos once Ryan is able to walk.

Disney on Ice

On Friday night we headed out to Abbotsford to see 'Disney on Ice - Toy Story 3' or as Carter calls it 'Toy Story Ice." Previously it's only been held in Vancouver but this year they held it in Abbotsford as well as they have a nice new Arena for the Abbotsford Heat AHL team. We've gone almost every since Callie was 15 months and this year we chose Friday night as you get 2 for 1. Before the show we met up with Veronica and Brad and their kids Sarah and Lauren at the Spaghetti Factory. We met them in prenatal class for Callie and have keep in touch every since.

The theme has ranged from a mix of Princess shows to High School Musical but this year was totally dedicated to just the one movie. I'm not sure that you'd be able to know what was going on if  you hadn't seen the movie before but it was still excellent. I'm amazed at the sets they manage to come up with. My favourite scene was probably the opening one with all of the army guys parachuting in. Two of the guys actually glided in from above on a lifting rig and they used special effects to make it look like they were all arriving the same way. (Actually they were probably mostly army girls.)

Buzz light year had a similar entrance that included a flashy rocket trail. Carter and Callie had a great time and Disney emptied our wallets nicely for Cotten Candy and drinks.  Apparently if you add a 25 cent plastic cup or hat to something you can charge $12.00. They were nice enough to include handy wipes with the Cotten Candy which was very much needed since Carter tends to just let the stuff dissolve in his hands. It was a 30 minute drive home afterwards and we stopped off at Toys-R-Us for their midnight sale to pick up some gifts for Kerry's Sunshine fund at her school. They had portable high-chairs on sale and several teachers are having babies. We didn't get home till 10:30 but still had a lot of fun.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween weekend officially kicked off on the Friday before for us. Callie and Kerry's school were holding a school dance. I don't recall having elementary school dances when I was a kid other than perhaps something for Grade 7 but this event is for the whole school. The tickets were free and they had  a cake walk, door prizes and even a smoke machine and strobe light. Callie had already prearranged to be there with several of her friends and within minutes they were out on the dance floor. One of the first songs was 'Firework' by Katy Perry which was the song everyone danced to at the end of her ballet recital. You could tell which kids went to the same dance school as they all had the same moves. Even Carter got out there to dance with Mommy. I don't have pictures but if you can picture him in his horse costume shaking his booty so that his tale swung back and forth you'll get the idea.

I decided to try a different technique for pumpkin carving this year. Usually I cut straight through but this year I tried one of the ones where you only remove the skin and most of the meat from the inside so that your image glows. It wasn't as difficult as I had thought so I think I'll try something a bit more challenging next year. (By challenging of course I mean copying someone else's work) This year's pumpkin was Phineas from Disney's Phineas and Ferb. A show for the whole family. My favourite trick-or-treaters were the eastern European  family who were speaking in their native language. The only word I understood was Phineas.

Carter was a horse of course, Callie was a witch and Kerry decided she needed something different then her old standby costume of Mickey Mouse's wizards hats along with some Mickey gloves. Our annual routine was disrupted a bit. Rather than the whole family heading over to Corey and Carmen's only Kerry and Callie were able to go. Carter wasn't feeling very well and fell asleep on the couch. He did manage to make it out with them when they got home and they had their biggest hull to date. I'm thinking giving out two candies per kid is stingy compared to what some of the other families were handing out. We only got 60 kids so maybe we'll do something special for candy next year.