October 07 : catching up

October 07: Mid month we were visited by Baba - which we all enjoyed. We were able to hunt for pumpkins! We ended up at a cool farm that had tons of activities and tons of pumpkins. We opted for one huge pumpkin rather than 4 little ones. I tell ya, this is the way to go! It was a sinch to clean out and carve, unlike the smaller ones. We discovered this year that if you mar the surface, it glows when lit from inside. This added a lot to our designs and expanded our desires for carvings. Kade wanted a crazy face, so made tons of marks on his side, Kai chose Naruto, so I helped out with his side. Jeff made a face on his side and it let a lot of light through. I took the top and made a spider web design to incorporate the lid. It turned out great. Here's some pictures!











The fires started just after we got home from the pumpkin farm and we were jolted into a reality that things are just things and that natural disasters can happen anywhere you live. I will say that the threat of wildfires seemed more appealing to me than the threat of tornadoes (like we had in TN). Anyhoo, Baba got to 'enjoy' our packing the overnight/day bag and making sure we knew what our evacuation plan was. Our area was under a voluntary evacuation order, but we chose to stay. Jeff was super good at work handling all the HR things that go into an emergency situation. I know some workers were under mandatory evacuations. Too scary. However, the winds died down enough for the firefighters to be able to do their thing. Time cleared the air of smoke and we continued on with our lives.

Other things that happened? Well, I remember only tid bits: looking for a karate studio for Kai (we tried 2 before we found the right one...and that wasn't till later), finding other groups of kids (we ended up finding two great ones!) and trying to meet up with them. We finally did and are still enjoying every minute we spend with our new friends. Our big event was our trip back to Nashville. As part of the moving deal, we promised the boys they could go back to TN to be with our friends Samuel, Benjamin and Caroline for Halloween. This was decided mostly by the kids - since they had made Halloween plans way before we even started talking about moving. I piled on the plane with 2 really excited boys and we headed off to see our old hometown - costumes in tow. The boys decided to be Star Wars characters and so I sewed together some robes, tunics, belts and boots to make them actually appear to BE those Star Wars characters. The TN boys were also getting their Star Wars costumes together as well. Kade changed his mind and wanted to be Yoda Halloween day. So, I took Caroline, Kade and Kai with me to Michael's and purchased material that would help Kade look like Yoda. We got back to the house and started working on the mask and hands. The kids found the perfect Yoda walking stick in the yard, and Kade finally had his costume. In the mean time, Caroline helped sew things together and she was able to make a great little blanket out of the mask/glove trimmings. As well, we got some paper and made more Halloween decorations, we got to carve some pumpkins and we really had a blast walking around the neighborhood and seeing familiar faces. All in all, the visit was incredible. We really connected with our cool friends and enjoyed our time immensely. As we left, we made plans for the next year...