My Beautiful Gabby

This pic was from November. She's so beautiful!

Halloween

Halloween around here: Gabby was Felicity, her Colonial Era American Girl doll. Sam was James. Robert's folks were here with us. It was a nice evening, despite the predictions for rain. We had time to go out trick-or-treating and then hand out candy before it started raining.

Museum of Glass

The Museum of Glass in Tacoma is fascinating. You can watch them make items in the hot shop. We happened to be there on the last Sunday in October, when they make a creation designed by a kid. That was neat to see. I have to admit that the bridge was my favorite part of the whole thing, followed closely by the kid designs.

Olympia

We stopped in Olympia to eat at Anthony's on our way home from Mount Rainier.

Mount Rainier with the Hilliards

This is Mount Rainier in October. Already plenty of snow at Paradise. Enough for a snowball fight and to build a snowman.

One more try

Another test

Last one didn't work like I thought. Trying something else...

Just testing

IMG_6139
Originally uploaded by hilliardr

I haven't been blogging much since it is such a pain to get pictures from iphoto to the blog. This is a test to see if the process from iphoto to flickr to blogger will be easier than what I have been doing. Stand by - if this works, I might get some blogging done.

Pumpkin Carving

All our pumpkin patch-ing done, we sat down to carve two of our pumpkins. Gabby drew out the designs, Robert took command of the carving and I sorted and roasted the pumpkin seeds. I am the only one who will eat them, too. Oh well, I think they are good!

Pumpkin Patch with Gabby

Gabby and I went to the pumpkin patch last Wednesday with her Brownie Troop. It is the same patch Sam went to and they did the same things - petting zoo, hay maze, hay ride, and pumpkin choosing. Both my kids took the choosing of the pumpkin very seriously. They were happy with their choices. The pigs, that were so cutely asleep when Sam was there, found great delight this afternoon in attacking the shoes of those who ventured in to the pens.

Pumpkin Patch with Sam

Sam's preschool made their pumpkin patch trip last week. Don't worry, Gabby gets to go with the Brownies this week. It was a beautiful morning. Sam was a bit picky about his pumpkin, we walked pretty far in to the patch. He loved the tractor and the kittens. He ran through the hay maze and petted all the animals. The preschool trip ended with pumpkin shaped sugar cookies and a juice box.

Pumpkin Factory

I saw these sweet little red apples on a friend's blog a couple of weeks ago. They were so cute and upon finding out how easy they were, I showed the kids how to do them, except we used orange and made pumpkins. Sam made his one and was happy. Gabby made one, two, three...eighteen. She is creating a pumpkin patch for her American Girl. In fact, I need to go rescue a couple from her room - I wanted to decorate my house with them. She took the supplies with her to PWOC and made some for each kid and her and Sam's teacher there. She took one to her piano teacher. She likes making these little pumpkins. And they are cute. Thanks, Mary Katherine!

Corn Maze

We went to the Rutledge Corn Maze on Columbus Day. Both kids have pumpkin patch field trips scheduled but Robert was going to miss both of them and I was going to try to take them separately so we decided the big corn maze would be a little different and fun. The maze this year is shaped like Capt. Phil Harris of Deadliest Catch fame and his boat, the Cornelia Marie. Quite a few of those crab boats and crews come out of the Seattle area. You can see an arial shot HERE . There are two paths through the maze and we did them both. After that we walked around to their pumpkin patch and picked out a couple of big pumpkins. It was a beautiful day!

Ice Skating Progression

Lesson three and she's getting better. More confident. The class is 30 minutes and then the students can stay for the free skate afterward. We have about 30 minutes before we have to go to preschool pickup. She spent almost all of that 30 minutes this week working on following that ice cream cone drawn on the ice and then making the turn back down the line. Unfortunately she had to miss lesson four for Sam's preschool field trip but she'll be back at it this Thursday!

Halloween Houses

Before the assault

We made Halloween houses again this year with the Bakers. The moms got smart this year and got together the night before to assemble the houses and the set the kids loose to decorate them. I haven't taken pics of the finished products yet. I will do that and post them later.