Category: Family

Tonight was the Fall Festival at the girls’ school, Marley Park. Abigail was a cat, Grace was Dorothy (from the Wizard of Oz), Lucy was a different cat, and Gwenyth was the requisite duck. The PTA did all kinds of stuff for the carnival and the girls had a great time. Lucy literally ate about 8 suckers, 4 bags of M&M’s, etc. And that’s just the stuff I saw her eat. Every time I looked up, she was off begging the next person for some candy. We were kind of a side show there.

Grace won a prize for her costume. It was really cute. I’ll have some pictures up sometime after Halloween. We didn’t get any tonight. Abigail and Grace loved the cotton candy (as did Julie) and snow cones.

That’s all for now. I’m tired.

We got back tonight from a good break in Oceanside, CA. We stayed at the same place that Julie and I stayed at in June, but this time it was a 2 bedroom so we could lock the 3 girls in together. We went to the beach, had some good food, watched the sunset, went to the San Diego Zoo, played Mouse Trap, fed the fish, and all kinds of stuff. Julie’s sister, Lisa, and her family just happened to be in Oceanside at the same time — and even at the same place. I ran into Taylor at the beach the first morning we were there. So we were able to boogie board and party with them at the beach. We topped it off with an evening at Ruby’s at the end of the pier. Grace was especially excited to play with her new friend from St. George.

The weather was perfect — sunny when we needed it, and not so sunny when we didn’t. We drove all the way up to Knott’s Berry Farm on Friday. We got there around 12:30, and saw a sign that said the park closed at 5:30 for their haunted house thing. We decided against shelling out $140 or whatever it would have been for 5 hours of fun. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the rear of the van, but we all survived.

Saturday we woke up to find a lot of rain had fallen, but we headed out to the Zoo anyway. Once we got there it was nice and overcast throughout most of the day. We had a really good time. Gwenyth started feeling bad and had a fever most of the day and today on the way home.

We brought back lots of treasures from the beach. Grace got a few too many shells — some of them I found this morning had clams in them, so it was a bit of a stench when I got her collection ready to head home. The drive home wasn’t bad; we only stopped about 8 times for potty breaks. Plus Julie read to me from her “fix-your-husband” book collection. A fun trip, plus she had turned me into a kindler, gentler, more sensitive listener. Everyone wins.

New pictures are up. I’ll be labeling them when I can. http://www.flickr.com/photos/midder/ It’s back to the grind tomorrow, and it should be quite a grind for the next month or so.

Happy Autumn.

Last night we met Ryan and Sheri Steele (the hip new bloggers) at Schnepf Farms in Queen Creek for some good times. If you’ve ever been out that way, it took about an hour or so to get to Rittenhouse Road, and then what seemed like another hour to get through 2 stop signs to the farm. Anyone who lives south of Rittenhouse is hurting.

Dial Corporation had their corporate party there last night, and it was the first weekend of their fall festival, so it was pretty crowded. Once we got our bearings about us and took Lucy to the bathroom 6 or 8 times things started to go well. We had a great time on all the stuff there. The swings, bees, slide, pig races, pumpkins, merry-go-round, go-carts, and everything else was fun. The food wasn’t the greatest and was a rip-off, so if you go I would do what you can to plan your meals elsewhere. Of course if you went anywhere else, you’d have to come back on Rittenhouse, so nevermind. I digress. We roasted marshmallows on the fire, got slushees, stuffed a scarecrow, and all kinds of fun stuff. The girls can’t stop talking about how much fun they had. Plus I have an as-yet faceless scarecrow on my front doorstep. They were closing down so we didn’t get a chance to paint a face on.

It was good to see Ryan and Sheri again. For whatever reason, their girls seem to love Lucy, so that takes a load off of me. She drives them crazy, I’m sure, but they’re very patient with her and she had a blast. Everyone seems to match up pretty well and they all have a good time.

We’re off to Oceanside on Wednesday, so look for those pictures in a week or so. For now, enjoy the ones from the farm.

With nothing in the forecast below 92 for the next 5 days, our weather has turned positively fall-like. That must be why we got down the eleventy-three bins of fall holiday decorations. We now have 3 pumpkins lit up on the house, an incredibly ominous skeleton greeting guests, and a venerable conrnucopia of fun and lights surrounding our door. Truly a site to behold. Don’t fret — I shall have pictures up shortly.

Things never seem to stop (or even slow down) around here. Next week is Fall Break for the girls, so we’re going to take them all over to Oceanside for a few days. I got a condo at the same place — but a 2 bedroom this time. The woman we rented from before was great, so I asked her about availability again. So we’re going over. We’ll probably go to Sea World and the Wild Animal Park, along with hanging out at the beach. It should be fun.

After the jaunt to So Cal we should be around for quite a bit; mostly because if I take any more time off I probably won’t be invited back again. I’ve got a project I’m working on now that will most likely kill me off before Thanksgiving. I’ve been kind of avoiding it so I can do things here at home. Speaking of home, we finally finished cleaning out the rental. It actually turned out pretty good. You can see some pictures of it here. Hopefully it gets sold and/or leased out pretty soon. If you want it, and I know you do, let me know.

Update: Well, looks like you all missed out. The house is now leased out for a year.

December looks fun. We’re going to Polar Express again on Dec 7/8. Fun times.