Happy Halloween!!

I could just eat her up!

A beautiful fall afternoon. . .

we spent sat. afternoon at grandma & grandpa nitto's eating a great lunch and visiting with old friends from ny, the yezzis. . .

isabella enjoyed grandma & grandpa's halloween decorations. . .

& exploring the backyard garden. . .

it all made for a nice fall afternoon!

Lunch with friends . . .

this morning isabella and i both got flu shots. then we met the melansons, sophia, sam & their mommy brenda for lunch. it was great to see them & catch up! sophia and sam are growing so fast and are too cute!

here's sam just finishing up lunch and snacking on a napkin. . .

& sophia smiling big for the camera!

Pumpkin Patch . . .

out of all the pumpkins. . .

isabella found the perfect one!

she rode a pony. . .

and checked out the goats. . .

we made it to the pumpkin patch after all and isabella brought home 2 perfect pumpkins for her front porch!

Home sweet home . . .

we are back!! had a wonderful time, but so so happy to be home. 9 days is a long time. it's so funny how we take all the comforts of home for granted. when you have a 10 month old you quickly appreciate them all again. we're exhausted after a full day of travel and losing 3 hours of our day. i was surprised to see isabella was asleep by 8:30 pm atlanta time. i have my fingers crossed that she changes back to her schedule without any issues. we have so many great photos from our trip - stay tuned for some more updates.

it was nice to come home to some cool fall weather and halloween's right around the corner. if all goes well, we hope to take isabella to visit her first 'pumkin patch' tomorrow. thought we'd get in the spirit, including updating our blog. i am off to bed and hopefully uninterrupted sleep ;-)

Happy Anniversary Honey . . .

can't believe another year has gone by! seems like just yesterday when you handed me that piece of cake for my b-day and I just about fell over. thanks for all your love, all the things you do for us, for being a great daddy, and thank you for that sweet baby girl!!

our big girl, sitting in a booster seat without straps. we forgot her chair and the restaurant didn't have any highchairs. i don't think they get many 10 month old kids!

here's the view from our table. you can see smoke from the fires on the left-hand side. the fires are about 100 miles away. when we left, we could see the glow from the fire.

A day at the San Diego Zoo. . .

what a huge and amazing zoo! we spent 4 hours and still didn't quite see everything. Isabella was sooooo good and didn't sleep a wink! we thought for sure she'd fall asleep eventually, but she waited until we got back at the house. we had a great 2 hour nap together! she's done so great on this trip so far, except she refuses to sleep alone (she wakes up scared to death once she realizes she's not in her own crib). i've been napping with her (i'm not complaining ;-) and she's been sleeping half the night with us - whatever works. here she is enjoying a ride with daddy, checkin' out the giraffes.

San Diego

Here's a few pictures of Mommy and me on the beach this morning. It was very windy, but beautiful. 

Then we walked down to the park and hung out for a little while. We saw lots of volleyball players and some boats in the harbor. 

Leaving, on a jet plane. . .

so we're off tomorrow morning, and i am so not ready to go yet. i started setting out Isabella's stuff last weekend, in hopes to be mostly packed by now - not so much! i was able to get a bunch of new toys for the plane ride, that will hopefully keep her occupied, i hope. my main concern is that she'll want to get down and crawl around the floor, which is not happening ;-)

a little update on her trillion and one activities lately - she loves to give hugs to mommy & daddy and her baby doll. this entails laying her head down on any part of you, it's so cute. she knows where her nose is and mommy's, her belly button, her hair (and can brush her own hair) and she's doing great with her sign language. she knows more, eat, light, help, drink and we're working on several more. some of these she can sign herself. she's a smart cookie!! more to come when we return. she'll probably be running, talking and doing math problems by then, who knows. . . ;- )

Baby Blues & New Shoes. . .

Isabella got a new pair of walking shoes for the fall. even though I would prefer she didn't ;- ), she's going to be walking soon, so I thought we should be ready. she tried them out Saturday while we went to the Norcross Art Festival. she's not too crazy about them yet, but I guess she'll get used to them. they're a nice accent to her beautiful blues. . .
wish us luck this Friday for our trip to San Diego. i'm praying the long flight with a 10 month old goes well. . .