Halloween 2015- Trick or Treat!

This year we (read- I) had a tough time deciding on what we should dress up as. I really wanted some kind of costume idea for the family that incorporated Jonathan's beard. We tossed around the idea of a lumberjack family, How to Train Your Dragons cast, Bob Ross and trees, and pirates. But we couldn't settle on any of those. Then, we thought about being robots or dinosaurs. Jonathan and I were dinosaurs many years ago, so I would only have to make a costume for Peter...so that was sounding good. But then Jonathan said we should be robots because we have heaps of boxes from moving and then Peter could help make his own costume- which was a fantastic idea and I was totally behind that. But then it just wasn't happening and wasn't happening, and Halloween was getting closer and closer. 

Then, about a week before Halloween, Jonathan sent me a picture of a guy dressed up as Yukon Cornelius, the miner from the old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer movie. As soon as I saw the Yukon picture, I knew we had to be part of the cast from that movie. Yukon has a great beard. I googled the cast and decided the easiest/most known characters, aside from Yukon, who Jonathan had to be, would be Rudolph, Bumble the Abominable Snowman, or Hermey the Elf who wanted to be a dentist. I didn't narrow it down any more until I found what clothing items we had or could be easily acquired from friends or the thrift store. 

I sent out a quick email to some friends in the area asking for specific colored pants, hat, jacket, etc. I got a response back pretty quick from a friend who had most of what we needed. For the rest, Peter and I ran to Wal-Mart for some felt, then to the thrift store for white pants and shirt for me. We found everything pretty quick and all was well. Peter decided he wanted to be the reindeer (which was great because his costume was by far the easiest, and I was going to be Bumble. 

The finished products!
Robin as Bumble, Peter as Rudolph, and Jonathan as Yukon.

Peter's costume: a pair of brown pants (a size too small, so they were high-waters, but whatever), brown shirt, and the giraffe headband I made for my costume last year, and I just cut the nubs smaller. Red lipstick on his nose. We owned everything for his costume, and it was the fastest to assemble.

Robin's costume: white pants and pajama sweater from thrift store (basically I chose the ones that at least semi-fit,trying to find non-maternity things that fit was near impossible, I think I tried on at least ten pairs of white pants.) We made the hat from cardboard, twine, felt and left over pieces of furry white from Peter's panda costume from last year. Jonathan engineered most of the hat/face, and did a great job. It looks better in pictures, and the glue gun saved the day on that part of the costume.

Jonathan's costume: borrowed red beanie, and used a safety pin to hook a red pom pom on the top. He covered a pair of black earmuffs in white fuzzy material. He made his ax by using cardboard and aluminum foil with a hammer as the base and made the belt buckle out of foil and cardboard. All of his clothing and backpack he already owned. He even thought to stuff the backpack with pillows to make it look full. He's pretty much genius level at making costumes.  

Our living room post costume making. 

Yukon and Rudolph, just hanging out. 

I learned a couple of things from our costume making- first, never wait until Halloween to make your costume...rookie mistake. Second- Jonathan is excellent at engineering things to work and have a good structure, and I can sew/design the outside look...so basically we are unstoppable. Third- Peter is a good helper, and sometimes makes things harder, but is still fun to have around when we make things.

Costumes were finished around 6pm, which was perfect timing for us to set out and gather some candy. We explained to Peter how it worked, and he did great. He would go up to every door, hit it with his bucket and yell, "Trick or treating!" Haha, I think by the end he got "trick or treat" down. Everyone thought he was adorable...because he is, and they loved that we all dressed up. I think most people knew who we were. Peter wasn't scared by any of the decorations or costumes we saw. Although the below house had a pirate skeleton sitting in a corner of their front porch with a sword sticking out of him. Peter said, "Oh no! Skeleton...pirate skeleton. He hurt. Oh no. He sad." He wasn't scared of him, but he did want to help the skeleton. He also would ask almost everyone who answered the door if they had a dog, and then proceed to tell them about our dog (our upstairs neighbor's dog). I'm pretty sure he liked chatting with everyone more than he liked getting candy.

Peter and Robin and the pirate house

We learned that we have a fantastic neighborhood for trick or treat. There was only one house with no one home. There were a few who left candy buckets on their porch. But almost everyone was home handing out candy. We live in a neighborhood with lots of empty nesters, and they were all in love with Peter. Also, you know how as a kid you would always spread the word, "Go to Mr Smith's house on the corner. He's giving out full sized candy bars!" Well, we had at least 4 houses giving out full sized candy bars. Candy for weeks! Peter did great at only taking one piece- although many times the people encouraged him to take a few more, apparently the neighborhood doesn't get a ton of kids, so they all were trying to give it away. Also, there was one house who had a candy bucket with candy and one dollar bills and they let kids pick if they wanted to get candy or money. HA! Peter picked candy...because that is a lot more appealing to a small one than a green and white piece of paper. Although if the choice had been between candy and pennies...he might have picked a penny. He likes the little coins.

There was a cool sunset, but we could either capture faces or sunset...not both.
So here are our cute faces!

We had a great Halloween night. Peter had a blast running to all the houses and looking at their decorations. His favorite adjective for things was "spooky". "Oooo mom, that man spooky." It was fun. We wore him out and got a ton of candy- we still have half a bucket and we only went around a small part of our neighborhood. We also learned where more people we see at church live, which was nice. Happy Belated Halloween, I hope everyone else had a great time!

The Salt Flats of Bonneville

Peter, Jonathan and Robin at the Bonneville Salt Flats, 8 August 2015

I have an unwritten bucket list of Utah things- either things in the state, or in a bordering state. Now that the time is potentially coming that we might move from Utah (no word yet on anything), I am feeling a need to get through some of this bucket list so I don't feel like we missed out on our time here. One of the things on this mental list was to go see the Bonneville Salt Flats.

One Saturday, we did it! Peter slept almost the whole way up and much of the way back. I was grateful for his napping because it's about an hour and a half drive, and a sleeping boy for that drive is much easier. Also it was nice because then Jonathan and I had a good time of a drive to talk about important things and just spend time with each other without a small person interrupting every 5 seconds. It was a pretty drive and we saw the Morton salt factory on the way. We also saw this cool sculpture:

Jonathan and Peter walking towards the "Tree of Utah" sculpture
Read more about it here.

We wanted to stop at this sculpture that we'd read about online. Maybe it looks weird, but it's pretty cool. You drive along to the same desolate yet beautiful views then out of nowhere, there is a this sculpture that grows as you near it. We just pulled off on the side of the road, there isn't any parking lot or anything, just pull over, and look in awe at this massive strange structure. Each of the big spheres are covered in minerals and rocks from a different part of Utah. 

Peter woke up when we were about 5 minutes away, so it was perfect timing to let him out of the car and eat a sandwich while he wandered around. He and Jonathan touched the water, and played on the "boat" a little bit and got some wiggles out before we finished the rest of the drive. 

Peter and his "Boat"

It's gorgeous. We went on the most perfect day.

As we got closer to the salt flats, the ground got whiter and whiter. It looked like it had snowed. It was such a stark contrast to the dark mountains. 

I love that this picture almost looks like it's split into two different pictures, but it's not!

We got to the official Salt Flats area, we wandered out past the dirt and into the salt. It was the strangest thing to me. The texture was very different than I expected it to be. It looks like snow, but it's not that feel at all. I thought it would be super grainy, and that I'd be able to kick it around. I imagined it would be more like someone had thrown down tons of loose table salt and the ground would be more movable. Instead, it was dense and crunchy. It was a little wet in some spots, and those areas were a bit mushy. It had a lot more texture than I expected. 

Salty Texture

Peter loved the mushy salt the best.

It was eerie to just wander around the salt flats because it looks like nowhere else I've ever wandered. It was so bright white with huge mountains around. It was so barren. No trees, so animals, just a handful of tourists amazed by salt. Kinda weird. Also, Peter started eating it, so we had to keep an eye on him. 

I really wanted to get some good family pictures while we were there. Unfortunately, I didn't make us do them until we were done and ready to go home. So, Peter was a little crazy and not loving the idea of standing still. But, luckily, we had a digital camera, so we could just take a ton of pictures and check them on the spot, and once one was pretty good, we called it a day. 

Best family picture of the day with a wiggly two and a half year old.

Maybe this one is the best, everyone is looking at the camera!

It was a fun time at the Bonneville Salt Flats. We went, we saw, we all left happy. Peter slept some of the way home. We stopped near Tooele, and grabbed some food in the quietest McDonalds we've ever visited and took advantage of their play place to give Peter some more running time. We did some errands in Salt Lake which included buying our new tent and sleeping pad, and going to the maternity clothes store to exchange a pair of white pants I've been terrified to wear and get some shirts for excellent clearance prices. Then, after a long long day, we headed home. 

He is the most handsome.
"Hipster enough for the hipster club?" -Jonathan-