Pumpkin Carving

Halloween is two days away so that meant carving time was here! After dinner tonight we set about to carving our Jack O' Lanterns! In the first picture below, you can see the face Ben made when he tasted the pumpkin seeds (Mark got him to lick them!? Boys!). Paige is wearing surgical gloves while she carves her pumpkin as we have discovered that she has an allergic reaction to pumpkin guts. Not sure if it's the juice or the seeds or what, but her hands and arms break out into this dry rash for a few weeks afterwards so this year she wore gloves. She can eat pumpkin pie so it is obviously a topical reaction. Mark decided to get make his life easier this year, and broke out his tools to help him carve his pumpkin. Life is always interesting around here! :) You can see our final products at the end. The very last picture didn't come out very clear, but if you look at it, you can see it is an open door with someone answering it and a small creature 'trick or treating'. I guess Marks fancy tools DID make his pumpkin the classy one this year!

Happy Halloween!!
Jaye

Fall Festival

Here we are, all ready to go to the Annual Fall Festival at Green Mountain Elementary. Mark was the MOST popular person there tonight. All the kids had to stop him and talk to him and of course, being the person he is, he talked to each and every one of them! He also saved a baby who was choking on candy! Way to go Tigger!

The cake walk was Bens all time favorite thing to do at the Festival and he went into it over and over again. His persistence paid off as he won TWO cakes (Paige also won one, so we are all set for cakes this year!). Paige had fun running around to all the different activities with all her little 'girlfriends'. They are at that age where Mom and Dad are SO embarrassing, and THEY are SO cool! :)

Hugs to all,
Jaye

Cakes by Greenes

We had the kids schools annual Fall Festival tonight. Last night the kids each decorated a cake for the cake walk! There were two categories, adult assisted and done by child alone. Both kids chose to do their cakes unassisted, and they did a MARVELOUS job! Paige went with the traditional "Happy Halloween" cake complete with spider web and bats. Ben went with a less traditional, but VERY original Graveyard cake. He iced his cake, then dug a hole in the middle and put candy bones in the hole! He took the cake he dug out and put it to the side so it would look like a pile of dirt by a freshly dug grave. Look out Ace of Cakes, there is a new kid in town! (If you are a true Foodie, you will know what I am talking about!).

Hugs to all,
Jaye

GeoCaching

Want a fun family friendly 'sport' that can be done rain or shine...that can take half a day or 15 minutes depending on your time available? Try Geo Caching! What is Geo Caching you are asking yourself? It is basically a technical 'treasure hunt'. People hid 'caches' in various spots, then enter the co-ordinates on a website. You then download the co-ordinates to your GPS (you NEED a GPS for this sport!) and head out to find them! Some caches are simply small containers (film canisters etc) with a 'log' for you to sign when you find it. Other caches are WONDERFUL for the kids in that they are buckets or ammo cans filled with toys and goodies. You are allowed to take something out and keep it as long as you put something back in. We now have a ziplock bag full of loot to be used to replace the things we take (we have magnets, bottle openers, McDonalds toys etc in ours). Another thing that can be found in caches is called a 'travel bug'. When you find one of these you take it (and don't have to replace it with something) and then put it in another cache that you go to. Each travel bug has a number on it that you log onto the geo caching website with and you can track where your bug has come from and where it has been.

Mark and I have been wanting to try this sport for awhile now, but haven't gotten around to it. One of the instructors that Mark had for one of his classes a few weeks ago is a Geo Caching enthusiast, and introduced Mark to it last week. They managed to get in quite a few finds and so Mark marked them all on his GPS and today we took the kids on six hunts. These were all fairly easy as Mark had been to each of them before, but typically you only do one or two hunts each trip out. The kids had a ball and we now have a new family sport! We found a few 'log only' caches and signed them with the date. We also found some 'treasure caches' and the kids had a ball not only picking out what they would take but also what they would put back ( a nice little life lesson there!). We found TWO travel bugs in two separate caches and are now on the look out for other caches that we can leave them in! You can see the two kids and I with one of our travel bugs, it was a wooden disk with the travel bug nailed onto it. The other travel bug we found was put on a keychain and people had added other keychains to it. In keeping with the spirit of this bug we thought we'd put a WA state keychain on it!

Our first cache was a 'log only' type cache that was in a small canister screwed onto the bottom of a rock! When flipped right side up, it looked just like an innocent little rock! The clue was 'no need to call for help' and was at Wild Cat lake state park just a few minutes from our house. We went straight to the phone booth there and it took us awhile before we realized that innocent rock was our 'cache'. (Picture of kids with cache by phone booth).

Our second cache had the clue 'fire in the hole'. Mark took us right to the site, and it was in a small gully (hole!). Once at the bottom we looked around for a hole (we were thinking TOO obvious!). Then I saw a burned piece of wood and the clue clicked in my brain. Yup, when Ben flipped over the burned piece of wood (fire) at the bottom of the gully (hole) there was another log only cache! (Picture of Ben with wood).

Our third cache was a treasure cache started by Peter Rabbit :) The kids were thrilled to find a tupperare type container filled with small toys and treasures. Also in the cache was a small stuffed Peter Rabbit and a Peter Rabbit notebook that was used as the log. (Picture of Mark and kids with stuffed animal)

Moving on to our fourth cache in the woods. The clue was that it was well camouflaged and boy were they right! It took us awhile to find it, even though we knew it was a five gallon bucket! The smarty pants who started this cache had taken large pieces of bark and zip tied it all around the bucket so it looked very much like a stump when sitting in the bushes! Again, it was a treasure cache that the kids had fun with. This was also where we found our first Travel Bug! (Pictures of hidden bucket and Me and kids showing off our bug!).

Our next cache took us to Scenic Beach State Park (yes, the same park I blogged about last summer where Paige sliced open her toe on an oyster shell!). This turned out to be another 'log only' cache, but still fun to find! (Picture of Paige finding cache in tree).

Our last cache was another treasure cache and also where we found our second travel bug. It was along the road so it made it a bit of an adventure walking along with traffic zipping by! Also, the people who started the cache (it was in a bucket hidden at the end of their driveway) had two snarling dogs that took great joy in barking through their fence (complete with Beware Of Dog sign!) the whole time we were there!

This is truly a FUN sport and there are caches all over the world. If you are interesting in getting started send me an email OR go to geocaching.com and log in! We highly recommend this for families as there is no age or physical limitation to this. Fun, Fun, Fun!

Hugs to all,
Jaye

CK High School Choir sings for Halloween

Here is a perfect song for Halloween, sung by the best choir in the world! :)

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CK High School Choir

Sam had his first choir concert last night and WOW! Did those kids ever do a fabulous job!! I took a few little video montages and will post a few of them here. The one at the bottom of this post is a wonderful example of their harmony. They sound good enough to sing somewhere big and important! I was a very proud mommy last night (Ok, I am always a proud mommy..but even more so last night!).

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Fall Fun at Whidbey Island

What a weekend we had up at Whidbey Island! It was wonderful to get away from work and phones and life for a few days....

Our trip started out with a 40 minute wait on this side of the Hood Canal bridge as there was obviously some sort of sea going traffic going through (a sub maybe?). Once we got over the bridge we made it to Port Townsend without any further ado. We did stop at McDonalds for dinner as the ferry doesn't serve food later in the day. We discovered that McD's is no longer fast OR cheap! It cost us $30 for dinner there..yikes! But we had to head to the ferry so McD's it was!

We had a short wait at the ferry terminal on our way over (you can see the pictures of birds I took from the ferry...there were alot that day!), but the day was gorgeous and the ride over was enjoyable.

We arrived at Peggy and Gordons around 7ish..and they had yummy snacks awaiting our arrival...eating is one of the main things we tend to do over there! :) We watched a movie and then hit the hay in readiness for Saturdays adventures!

Saturday we headed out to Dagwalla Bay Farms (after a hearty breakfast of course! Thanks Gordon!) to check out their corn maze and pumpkin patch. The maze was 'A-mazing'! hehehe...and fun of course..you can see the kids in the above pics going through it. Once through the maze we headed over to the pumpkin patch where we each picked out the perfect pumpkin. You can see Ben above with his 'ghost' pumpkin. It is a variety of pumpkin that is white. He and Sam both picked this type and should make for interesting jack o' lanterns this year! (Bens mouth looks funny as he had a candy tucked into his cheek!)

You can also see the 'prowler' in the air. This is one thing I do NOT miss about living on the Island, the constant airplane noise as these big jets fly overhead from NAS Whidbey Island. While this is a small price to pay for our freedom, I really DON'T miss it. Thank heavens subs are SILENT! :)

After we got back to Peggy and Gordons we made deli style sandwiches (yes, more eating!) and had a movie marathon....

We left mid day on Sunday as we weren't sure what the ferry traffic would be like. Turns out we pulled into the ferry parking lot just as the ferry was docking, and we were one of the last cars loaded...perfect timing!

All in all, a wonderful weekend with wonderful friends. The weather was great, we got our pumpkins for Halloween and had a few days to unwind! We love our weekends up there!

Have a great week everyone!!
Jaye

Ghost Pumpkin

Autumn thoughts

Autumn has hit WA state with full vigor! The leaves are brilliant hues of red and yellow and orange. Some trees are so brilliant they almost look as if they are on fire! The air is bright and sunny, but the sun holds no heat and the air has that autumn chill to it. It is the time of year for all things 'halloweeny'! So on that note, we are headed up to Whidbey Island today for a weekend with our dearest friends Peggy and Gordon to enjoy the beautiful fall colours and traditions of the Island. We are going to take the kids to the pumpkin farm to pick our pumpkins (as usual my biggest kid MARK will pick the largest pumpkin he can find.And he teases ME about the size of our Christmas tree every year! hahaha). We will do the corn maze and hopefully this year they still have their hay ride! I will take pictures and post them.

Have a good weekend!
Hugs
Jaye

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends and family! We are having our feast here later this afternoon...Ham is in the oven..desserts are made (lemon meringue pie and caramel apples)...we have made it family game day here as everyone has the day off today! We love Canadian Thanksgiving as it always signals the start of the holiday season for our family....I can't wait to move to Wisconsin and get the rest of the family involved in our Canadian traditions!

Hugs to you all..
Jaye

Ahoy Me Maties!

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Here is a video and a picture of Ben's Pirate Party! Hard to believe he is six years old now! The first time Shelby ever came out to WA to see her Dad, I was very pregnant with Ben and NOW look at him! Time sure does fly! Ben is doing awesome in first grade and is now a VERY good reader! He is like Paige in that he is willing to tackle big words and sounds them out fairly accurately.

Hugs and Love,
Jaye