Pumpkin Carving

Awyn watches her Daddy carve her pumpkin. The drawing on the table is Awyn's jack-o'lantern.

Concept drawing

The drawing on the right is Sam's. He drew a face for his pumpkin before we started carving. The one on the left is Eric's interpretation of Sam's pumpkin.

Turner Falls

On our slow drive home from a lovely day of Sunday driving, we stopped at Turner Falls for a quick photo op.

Pipe Dreams

I'm about to tackle one of those home improvement projects that I would ordinarily hire a professional for. I've never done much with plumbing, and yes, I've already hired a plumber to fix this problem. The last plumber simply put new washers into the shower's cold water tap, and charged me $160. That fix lasted for slightly less than 24 hours. The leak is now pouring out water at a rate of around 2 gallons an hour. Seriously. As I can't afford to hire another plumber, I now must do this work myself, or at least go buy the parts. In order to find out exactly which part I need, I have to dissasemble the stems and parts inside, turning off the water to the whole house. Once I've done that, I take the faulty part to the store, buy new part, return home, and put it all back together again. I do have a home improvement book to guide me, and my father's said he'll stay near a phone to talk me through anything. I really do need to learn how to do this, and it doesn't seem too terribly difficult.

Why not hire a plumber, apart from the fact that I do not have the money? Well, apparently they don't carry the right part, and the last one wanted me to run out and buy a brand new faucet (a decent one starts aroun $100), knock a large hole in the drywall in the kitchen to access the pipes to the bathtub, replace entire assembly... Can you imagine how long that would take and how much he'd charge me? Please understand, this house is only 8 years old, and the pipes do NOT need replacing, even though it's obvious we had a contractor building a cheap spec house, using the cheapest parts available. (house still has the original el cheapo range in the kitchen - should have been an island vented stove, nope, it's tiny, electric, no vent, and doesn't always work right), anyway, the signs are everywhere, now that I live here.

So wish me luck. If I can find the camera, I'll take pictures as I go. This way I can email them to Dad so he can see what I'm talking about.

After a long day at the Expo...

Eric came up the night before with someone else, and we were lucky that he got to come home with us. Awyn actually fell asleep in my arms not too long after this picture was taken. She was one exhausted little girl. She said she loved petting the alligator and paddling the kayak, but she and Sam talked the most about Daddy's puppet show.

Getting ready to fling poo

Buffalo chip toss time. Awyn won a prize, a little plastic Indian doll that she calls 'my princess dolly'. They didn't have a ton of gloves, and most all of the kids used either both hands, or the ungloved hand. I found that funny.

Puppet masters

After the puppet show, Eric and fellow rangers come out with the puppets to let the kids ask questions and play with the puppets. Yes, that's Eric taking a knee in front.

Batgirl

One of the booths at the Wildlife Expo had real bats for the kids to look at, and this lovely frame to pose in. The kids got to kayak around an indoor pond, watch bird dogs demonstrate their skill, learn how to go fishing, and see their father give a puppet show. I'm not sure what I was expecting from the title, Wildlife Expo, maybe something more about hiking and camping and that sort of thing, but mostly it was about hunting, with a few outdoors adventure type things too. Eric and a few other park rangers were working the buffalo chip toss and puppet show, and their booth had some nice exhibits on the CCC and the many uses of buffalo parts and pieces.

There was one booth giving away tastes of various game - venison sausage (or jerky, can't remember), bison chili, something else. Sam wouldn't try any of it, and Awyn surprised us by not only trying everything, but finishing everything and wanted more. Sam was disappointed that we didn't make it over to the gun/hunting section where they were demonstrating gun safety and actually shooting at targets, or so the frequent sound of gunfire led me to believe. I do want Sam and Awyn to attend gun safety classes even though we don't own any firearms. Who knows when they'll be at a friend's house where half the family hunts or something like that.

Bat-Sam

Pumping Water

Sam is pumping water at the Antique Tractor Show. I managed to go all three days; once as a teacher on a field trip, once with Sam and Awyn, and again with the whole family. Eric didn't get to see as many exhibits, but he did remember the camera. Unfortunately, Sunday, the day we all went, many of the exhibitors and vendors had left. Still, there were a few neat tractors. Sam and Awyn liked making rope, watching the blacksmiths, shucking dried corn and grinding it into meal, and the steam tractor that was 'kind of like a train'.

Awyn's Turn

Sam being Sam

Sam was making some point or another, and I thought this was a funny picture. Please note that the sun is rising, not setting. We've got an incredibly early rising family, although I think it takes most of a pot of coffee to get Eric and I up and running fast enough to keep up with the kids.

Princess Awyn-Leia

This was Awyn's first Halloween Costume. She saw it in her closet and demanded to wear it. So Daddy helped her on with it. The belt didn't even fit her when she was a baby, but the rest of it went on just fine. We haven't discussed Halloween this year. I have no idea locally what anyone does yet, and we live rather out in the country, so I'd be very surprised to get any trick-or-treaters at the door. There are a few pumpkin patches around, locally, and I think some festival-type celebrations, so we'll likely do that. I don't know if either child will need a costume.

A boy and his dog

This little dog likes Sam. He really likes Sam. He likes for Sam to sit or lay down so he can lick ears, the back of Sam's neck, snuffle around his shirt, and he likes to run around after Sam. I was rather surprised; I expected he'd just stick close to me for a while and slowly warm up to the family, but he's just fine around everyone. Well, Awyn's a bit much for him, but she's learning to back off, and he rewards her by sitting up against her when she's still and quiet.

As the post below states, his name was Ricky, or so the lady who placed him with us had named him. Eric suggested Mojo, Mongo, and I tossed in Fezgig, and a few others, but the kids really liked Mojo. (I think it's a little predictable, but hey, I don't think he much cares what his name is yet.)

The good thing is that he's settling in fine, seems happy, and thinks we should go for more car rides. I wonder what he'd think of the bike trailer. Hmmm. Nah, that seems cruel.

Meet Mojo

He's got a fur problem, but that will grow back. Mojo is a Pomeranian. He was rescued after being found by an oil crew, along with a female. They were named Ricky and Lucy, because they are both red poms. Lucy is with another family, and Senor Ricardo came home to us, after a few weeks of fostering, cleaning up, and healing up. He was shaved because he had sores and serious flea problems. He's all healed up now, and an absolutely sweet little boy. We'll take him in to the vet to be neutered in the next couple of weeks. He's probably around 5 years old, give or take a year, fully housebroken, and apparently crate trained. I haven't had to do anything but follow his cues. He's playful with Sam, would rather Awyn backed off just a bit, but fairly tolerant of her. He follows me everywhere except when he's hanging out with Eric or playing with Sam. Oh, he does think he should be sleeping on our bed, but there just isn't room, and it's too high off the floor for him to get himself up or down. He's fairly big, not quite the teacup size that Pandora was. I think he'll also have a sable coat; those black tips overlaying the red fur. I'll take pictures as his fur starts to grow back. Right now he looks a little like a demented Chihuahua.

Hello Princess Awyn Kitty

Awyn struck a nice pose in her favorite kitty towel. She has a lot of favorites. She's rather funny like that - she will talk about how things are or aren't her favorite, and nobody else is allowed to have the same favorite things as she does.

September swimming

Awyn loves her turtle, Sam likes to splash around, and Daddy simply soaks. I didn't get in. It was really cold water. We didn't take the cover off earlier. It doesn't really warm up unless we take the cover off. This was nice when it was 90+ degrees out, but a little colder now that we're only seeing upper 70's to lower 80's. The cover has cut the evaporation to almost nothing. We haven't had to add water to the pool since we started using the cover.

Listen here...

Awyn is listening to her Daddy.