Sunday, October 24, 2010

Lovely Fall Storms

The month of October has been quite stormy, with high winds causing power outages about every other day! We celebrated 10/10/10 with a particularly bad storm, with sustained winds of around 80 mph. and gusts over 100 mph.! Anywhere else I think that would be considered a hurricane, but here it's just a fall storm, sightly windier than usual. Well, it caused lots of damage! Here are some bad pictures taken on the move:

A telephone pole that broke in half



One of the wire holding things that broke off a pole
and a landslide. Trees and wires were down everywhere, and a huge fish processing boat tore away from it's dock and ran aground. Our power was out for 21 hours. That wasn't bad considering they were saying it could be 2 or 3 days! We were warm and cozy and able to cook on our woodstove, so it was kind of fun! Our friends came over to get warm, and stayed the night, and we played a game of Catan by candlelight. The kids were quite used to the power being out by now, so they didn't really care.



Saturday, October 23, 2010

Sunny Seattle

Matthew had a bit of time between building jobs, so we decided to come out from under the clouds, and go to Seattle for a few days of fun in the SUN! Of course, just as we were getting ready to board our jet, the power went off again in during another storm! And yes, it was a rather scary, bumpy ride!

We visited auntie Christy and my long lost parents who are also visiting there. Our first day we went up the Space Needle, which is something Logan has wanted to do for a while. I think the kids were a little dissapointed that it didn't actually go to space.




Beautiful Meadow! (I was having fun with a special effects photo app on my iphone, as you can see.)



City view from the top.




More....

Next we rode the monorail into downtown and back.





Pretty picture of Ashlen running next to the Space Needle. She's such a happy girl!


This is a labyrinth painted on the ground just below the Space Needle. The kids all did it and loved running the path. I need one for my yard! When they're getting too wild I can say, "Go run the labyrinth 3 times!" It's surprising how long it actually is. That's the "Experience Music Project" (EMP) in the background.

Barefoot Boy of course had to take his shoes off on the sidewalk in downtown Seattle, near a man who was screaming unintelligible things about whiskey bottles!



From City to Farm

The next day we visited a farm with a pumpkin patch and a corn maze! It was beautiful, and our first time seeing either of those. The maze was fun. They gave us a map, and we had to find numbered posts with a hole punch attached to punch the numbers on our map to show that we found all of them. We didn't think it would be all that hard, so we started out letting Ashlen lead the way, which she did with great noise and excitement, only to realize later that we hadn't seen any # posts, and had no idea where we were! But I figured it out and saved the day. I'm a hero.

In the background are the entrances to the 2 mazes. We did the castle one, not the vampire, in case you were concerned!

Ashlen was on overload, saying, "Ball! Ball!" everywhere, and trying to pick up the biggest ones! She was so cute.




This was at the Auburn Supermall. I thought it was cute. Logan and grandpa had lunch together.
We came home the next day to slightly nicer weather. It was a fun trip! Yay for flight benefits!



Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Birthday Boys

October 2, Brennen turned 3, and Grandpa John turned...59! They had a yellowcopter applesauce cake. Here's a slightly better pic of the cake. It was slowly falling apart (and ending up with mysterious chunks out of it!) It didn't turn out as good as I had hoped, but it was the best I could do while feeling sick. Brennen loved it though, and it was yummy!
Because I've been sick, we just had a family party, (with Krista too!). We had spaghetti for dinner, then opened presents. Brennen was so excited about each new thing! (grandpa too!)


Tuesday, October 05, 2010

September things

In September more friends moved away. Ryan and Stephanie went to Destin, FL for a new Coast Guard post, and Carla and Steve transferred to Oregon for the Forest Service. Sad for us, but good for them!
Logan misses his buddy Gavin. Throughout the month, the kids played lots of games of "The Movers Are Coming". Saying goodbye to friends seems to be a way of life around here.

Matthew finished the main part of our new deck! It is beautiful! It has glass for the railing across the front. Logan was a faithful helper!
My dad had his last ride in the yellow helicopter, and is now retired from the Forest Service! (but I guess not officially till the end of the year.) So now he will have lots of babysitting opportunities! The kids went to say goodbye to their precious Yellowcopter before it headed back to Juneau. Watching that helicopter slinging things was the highlight (ha ha!) of their summer!