We had another great year of Trick or Treating in our Wells Branch neighborhood. Like last year the Godfrey and Myers families came to beg candy from our neighbors.
This year Wesley wanted to be a ghost. He was keen on the idea of running around saying Boo!, but less keen on the idea of getting his hair sprayed white.
Jillian was less clear on what she wanted to be. A duck, a turtle, a ghost-duck, a ghost-turtle. Since she actually fit into the costume we made for Wesley’s first Halloween (after cutting out the feet) she got to be a turtle. Plus, I wanted pictures of them both in the same costume.
The only downside to having Jillian dressed as a turtle was that she walked as slow as a turtle. She only hit every third or fourth house and was often being carried. On the upside she was pretty well content after she got three pieces of candy and would often stop to show me how much she had gotten.
By the end of the night the kids were ready to come home. Wesley raked in 3.25lbs of candy! His bucket was pretty much full to the brim. He is currently hording it in his room. I just don’t understand that boy. I never could have let it sit like that. I’m more of an eat until I’m sick kind of a guy.
All our Halloween 2009 Photos on Flickr!
We learned our lesson last year that warm Texas fall weather and early carved Jack O’Lanterns don’t mix. Last year the pumpkins had nearly collapsed by the time Halloween came around. So this year we used carving as a good activity to kill time before the main event Halloween morning.
For all of Jillian’s crafts and her earlier pumpkin she has wanted happy face pumpkins, Wesley wants mean or angry faces, and Redmond just wants to eat them.
Both kids did a good job assisting in the gutting of the pumpkins and neither was too grossed out (different than last year).
The finished product. From left to right: Jillian’s Happy Face, a Redmond inspired dog paw, and Wesley’s Angry Bat. He drew it on the pumpkin himself. I just did the cutting.
Tags: Amber, halloween, Jillian, Joshua, pumpkins, Redmond, Wesley
We recently took a trip to Washington. Because we were gone almost two weeks and because we managed to take a few thousand photos, I was having trouble deciding what to put up here. So instead of worrying about it too much, I’m just going to give a few examples and then send you to Flickr for all the photos you can handle (and then some).
To start with we flew standby saving us about $500 in airfare. Thank you Marty. I’m not sure I’d do it again. On the flight out we got the last four seats on the plane. All middles and all in different rows. We weren’t supposed to get on at all, but somebody didn’t show. The flight back was better, but we still had to trade around to get seats next to the kids. We did learn a few things: 1) Alaska’s non-stop flight is awesome. 2) Sitting one parent and one kid in one row while the other parent sits with the other kid 10 rows away is great. They can’t fight, fuss, or want to switch parents. Made the ride easier than I expected. We’ll be buying tickets like this in the future.
The first few days of our trip we just kind of lounged around. We did visit Amber’s mom on Thursday and my dad Friday. At my dad’s the kids chased chickens, fed fish and generally went back to the land. It was good to see my dad after almost 2 years.
On Saturday morning I took advantage of the good weather (and the threat of coming rain) to hike Sauk Mt. I was all alone during my trip with a few people pulling into the parking lot as I got ready to leave. It was gorgeous up there. I took way too many photos with the plan of combining them into panoramas. Here is one shot of Mt Baker made of 20 or so photos.
Tons of photos of/from Sauk Mt.
Later that day we visited Molly, Casey, Ari and Cecily in Ferndale. We ate, played and did a little sword fighting. I’m still recovering from my injuries. Amazing that Ari was Jillian’s age when we first met him.
Sunday the 11th was the day of the big event: Kathleen and Dave’s wedding! We chipped in as best we could to get everything ready. Everything went off without a hitch (well, they got hitched, but you know what I mean). Wesley was a ring bearer and Jillian the flower girl. Jillian decided to stop and pickup the flower petals midway down the isle so she’d have more to throw later.
It is at this point (cleaning up afterward the wedding actually) that I started to get sick. By Monday morning I was sick and spent pretty much all of Monday through Friday in bed with a fever. Because we didn’t have too many fixed plans and because I was sick, Amber and the kids mostly hung out for the next few days. Hoping I’d be better soon. We didn’t want to visit people with me this sick (not that I was up to it anyway) so we didn’t get to visit Grandpa Joe or anyone else really. They did visit the new children’s museum at the mall a couple of times. Quite nice I hear.
On Friday Night Susie came over and we carved a few pumpkins. We’d wanted to go to a pumpkin patch (since we don’t have real ones here in Texas), but it rained so hard all week they were all t0o muddy and wet.
Saturday we payed another visit to my Dad. We even caught a half dozen frogs and a salamander. Then we headed to Seattle where we were staying the night. We met Pat for dinner at U-Village and got some treats at Starbucks.
Sunday was our last full day in Washington. We ate breakfast on Alki and then had lunch with Jessica, Nic, Kailyn, Derrick and Aidan. Baby Grace was still a few weeks away from arriving. Finally we had dinner with Janette, Lisa and Stelanne.
Photos from the morning of 2009-10-18
Photos from the afternoon of 2009-10-18
My apologies to all the people, places and activities that got slighted by this blog (eg, the wedding, Corey’s house, Dave’s family, etc). There is just too much to cover if we ever expected to get anything posted. If you want to see all the photos head to our Washington Trip collection on Flickr.
Tags: Amber, Jillian, Joshua, washington, Wesley
John and Bert are down for the weekend for a WSU/Notre Dame game in San Antonio. Since they were so close they paid us a visit. It was great to see them. The kids were shy at first, but warmed up quickly.
After showing them the house Wesley was eager to show them the backyard. And of course play horseshoes and baseball.
After the mosquitoes drove us back in (yes we still have mosquitoes) we went to the park to show them the pond.
We saw the “waterfall”, showed them fruit from the Bois D’Arc trees and of course hung out on the gazebo.
It was such a nice visit. Wesley will especially miss “Uncle Bert” as he likes to call John. And just this once, in honor of their visit, Go Cougs!
