More Halloween Shenanigans

 And of course, I need to post the Halloween costumes.

Ruben the wizard.

All three of the monkeys.

And a better look at them.

Lizzie (Ted from Bill & Ted) and her friends.

Halloween Shenanigans

In an effort to keep things more like they've always been, we planned a Halloween Extravaganza. 

We began by making pizza.

We tried a new crust recipe this time. I haven't blogged about this yet, but David took foods in grade 12 and learned a lot about working with doughs. So I'm not allowed to roll out the pizza dough anymore. It ain't good for the crust.

Anyway, once we'd made our pizzas, we could carve our pumpkins. This year we picked up pumpkins at Save On foods. Gotta love the cheap prices compared with the pumpkin patch.

One of my kids hates touching pumpkin guts. 

The other one....

Andrew carved an ant.

Liz did Bat Man.

And of course, I like to go weird with my pumpkins.

Scarecrow Crawl at Arts Nursery

Surprise, surprise! Elisabeth asked me this weekend if/when we were going to visit a pumpkin patch this year. To be honest, the thought hadn't really occurred to me. You know I'm operating at less than optimum brain power when I forget about seasonal activities!

Pumpkin patches have become quite expensive, so I knew we weren't going to do a traditional pumpkin patch, but I thought we could probably go wander around a local nursery and get some of the experience. 

Arts Nursery in Port Kells does an awesome Scarecrow Crawl, we've been visiting for years. It gets really busy but we decided to chance it.

The boys were very obliging about posing as Barbies.

Imagine my delight when I realized the kids had unwittingly coordinated! I insisted on photos, immediately!

And then we wandered around looking at the scarecrow displays. Here are a few of my favourites:

Arts Nursery does some amazing things. Their social media is fantastic and I learn a lot from watching their educational reels. But one of my favourite things they do is this Pumpkin Tree. Here's a little story about how it came to be.

There was live music so we listened and took some more pictures.

And just as we were trying to selfie a family picture, a lovely man asked if he could take our picture.

Great idea to go Liz! I'm glad we didn't miss out on this seasonal fun!

Elisabeth's Grad Trip to Rockridge Canyon

A time honoured tradition at the kids' school is that the grad class does a retreat to Rockridge Canyon in Princeton. David absolutely loved his trip, and in fact we looked at him potentially working there for a summer. In the end, I think he wasn't quite old enough (thank you late year birthday) and it was a little too far from home. 

Anyway, last week, Elisabeth departed on her grad trip.

 I'm going to have to get Liz to share some more pictures with me. This was one of the views. She sat on a bench out on a spit in the water for hours every day. Sat outside trying to catch a sun set for me (she knows I'm obsessed) and seems to have had a great time. 

She was not a fan of the food (surprise, surprise)

She and her five best friends got to room together. They had six bunk beds between them, so they each got a whole bunk bed to themselves. They had their own bathroom with multiple showers, toilets and sinks. It was a good taste of living at university for this kid who's never done a camp or really anything like it.

Apparently one of the highlights was freedom. "If I wanted to go on a hike in the forest at night, I didn't have to tell anyone." (pardon me?!) 

Chapel was another highlight. There were multiple photoshoots in the forest/mountains and then this giant paint game. 

We're blessed our community celebrates our grads this way.

Back, by Popular Demand

Maybe I shouldn't say popular demand has me blogging again, but when Andrew and Elisabeth were in Ontario this summer Terri asked Elisabeth to ask me if I was ever going to blog again :)

So here we are again, let's see if I can keep up with the blog now that I'm 'retired'. I'm sure that the posts won't be linear; I'm going to try to fill in the years when I wasn't blogging as well as keep up with current events (there aren't that many these days!)

So. here we go....