Trick Or Treat

I went trick or treating with a 60's dancer, Tigger, a monkey, a ninja, and a ranger supervisor. Started at JR's house, and walked up toward Eads street.
I forgot to get a picture of the pumpkin on their porch that was puking. Cute family picture inserted instead.

Looks like Gavin may have said something brilliant.

This is in front of Patti's house. She apparently decided to hide out on Halloween. She left her twenty year old son home alone. He had no idea what to do when three adorable children knocked and awaited an answer, "trick or treat" quietly exiting their mouths. He opened the door quickly, muttered "sorry" and quickly shut the door in three disappointed faces. Onward to another, more welcoming house......

Much more welcoming :)

Trace's bag is starting to get heavy. There is a very warm wind, and his costume (tigger) doesn't breathe so well.......

Monkey is having fun with his glow stick.

Tigger is so cute!

Every pumpkin in this yard was painted white. Crazy

Sumo and a devil over at Ashley's house. She got pissed off at me because one time I answered the door and yelled "pinata!!!" and threw the candy up on the air and watched as the children dove after the candy. Ashley didn't think there was enough candy to do something like that, so I wasn't allowed to answer the door for a few minutes, I had to beg to redeem myself.

Ninja taking a break.

Hailey got some of my absolute favorite candy.....a gummy hot dog!

Trace sure is sweating! We found this sword on the side of the road. Pretty sweet, it sure makes tigger look more intimidating.

Monkey loved that sucker.

"Everyone loves a great rack!" Pig Feathers BBQ
That was the giant bowl of candy Ashley was scared was going to disappear. Rhyson protected it pretty well, even donating a half used container of Capri Sun. How generous.

Pile of apples

I made apple cider on Wednesday. Since I did it by myself, I didn't take any pictures or anything, so really, it was like magic. However, before the apples magically turned into cider, Santos took a minute to express his love for apples, or as he called it "manzana".

He did end up almost eating an entire apple, minus the skin. He found another love besides cheese!

The Gatherer

I just so happened to be talking about my grammie when she calls me this last Sunday afternoon. I was talking about her because I had gone to church earlier in the day, and I wanted to tell her in order to receive some sort of praise that I can't usually attain from such a lady. She had called me because she thought her apple trees were going to fall over if someone didn't pick some of the apples off soon. I hadn't picked apples for juice or cider for a couple of years, and even though I remember it being so much work that I swore I would never do it again, the thought of making my own cider and maybe some jam overtook me and I became so excited that I told her that I would be out the very next day to pick all of her excess apples. She seemed pleased.....

Logsden is a rainbow of fall colors! Despite all of the clutter in her front yard, I had to capture the beauty of this bright red tree, with the golden yellow one in the background. I was wasting precious time snapping shots while it was still daylight. Since Jered was still busy with the deer, I dragged mom and Steven out with me and put them to work helping me gather apples. They were unloading the boxes out of my car as I was running about, attempting to capture the many colors in the yard that my camera couldn't handle.

Steven looks as if he is already enjoying himself, even though the box isn't even half full yet! He started on the shortest tree, but it still looks as if it is hung!
No, she didn't have any drinks to get a smile like that! That is my mom, always willing and ready to help. It is after 7Pm, and she has been working since 6AM, and will do it again the next day, and will still wear that smile. She had two boxes filled by the time I had one. At first, I was trying not to get any spiders in my hair. After being passed up by my mom, I figured I had to pick up my pace, I was being the gatherer, not her.

We filled up all four boxes in under twenty minutes, and the trees were still hanging like they were about to split. The sun was now gone behind the coastal fog hovering in the "west" but it did leave behind a little pink to enjoy for a minute or two.


I had then decided that four boxes weren't enough to satisfy my intense cider making party plan, so I began brainstorming about what I was going to do next. We unloaded the boxes into the element, and began to fill the blue cart. Grammie was out scrounging up some other boxes, but I knew how much they meant to her, so I knew that I was not going to take even one of them away from her. We filled up the blue cart, around the same time that it got so dark the apples could no longer be seen. I think we almost got them all, but until the sun shone again on the fruit trees, it will be left a mystery. I think we got enough to keep me busy.
Grammie came up with a garbage can that "had never been used" for garbage. She seemed more than willing to part with it for a time while it becomes an apple storage. At the time it was being used as bird food storage. The cart almost filled the whole thing up! I know I have very poor spacial skills, but I was still very surprised for the successful gathering.

Looks like everyone is happy!!!

The apples were sweet, with a bite of sourness. I love cameo apples, and the choice ones of these are comparable. It is going to make super good cider. I am going to try out some cider jam too, it sounds really good. Maybe an apple crisp............

I thought that I should rinse out the garbage can before we put the apples in it....Even though it had never been used for garbage. Grammie still had to show me how to turn the water on. So her punishment for showing me up was me taking a picture of her. That outta teach her!

I have a huge amount of work ahead of me, but I think it is all going to work out good. I have access to an apple press for free this year, I just need to get something to grind up the apples. I should be able to figure something out, I do have access to the internet!

The Hunter

After many early mornings (for years I can only assume) Jered killed his first deer last Saturday. I believe I was fortunate that I wasn't present for the assassination, but I am sure that the experience was super surreal for him. He had been scoping out this particular spot many outings; seen the rubbings and other sign. I suppose it was just a matter of time before the horny males were too distracted by voluptuous females to keep their guard up every waking minute of every day. Who can be expected to do that when mating is pulsating through the brain? It just had to be at the right moment, and Jered happened to be stalking at that moment.

He ended up shooting the buck (four point to be exact?) and watched it tumble down a valley. I can only imagine dragging a lifeless ball of meat up a steep canyon, and my legs are sore from just thinking about it. I think it was all worth this super sexy picture, but I am not so sure Jered would agree with me. He will enjoy the meat more than I.

Seriously, look at those dimples!!? Pretty hot!

So since he killed this deer, that meant he had a lot of work ahead of him. He did work really hard Saturday, since we already had plans to see his sister and family on Sunday. I believe he got it almost all cut up by Sunday night. I don't want to post any of the bloody pictures of the mangled animal hanging from rope by his own antlers, but I think anyone can imagine.

But another hot picture of a super manly man wouldn't hurt I don't think :)

Oddwater

I love going to the aquarium for Halloween. I think this may be the last time I go. I think too many other people love to go. We waited outside in line for twenty minutes or so. Besides one bag ripping disaster, the kids stayed under control, no fights or crying. Each of us had two cans of food to donate for entry. For some reason, I thought my cans that I brought would fit in the wal mart plastic bag that had enough cans for Jennifer's family entrance fee. I was wrong unfortunately, and the bag ripped five or so minutes after I had placed my cans in, so keeping all twelve cans under control until we reached the gate was a little bit of a struggle. Santos was the itsy-bitsy spider (cutest thing ever!), Carmen was a pirate, and Tony was some sort of ninja or something.

It seemed to take forever to get a chance to take this picture! I stood there for minutes before I got a split second then.....someone would walk in front of me, lame. I was ready to move on without a good pic.

Santos isn't mad like he looks, I think the flash may have been too bright for him. He doesn't seem to be scared of anything yet, I am so proud.

This is a lionfish. It seems like all of the pictures that I took ended up blurry, but at the time I was so excited about the lighting in the place. I hadn't got to see "oddwater" yet.

I have never seen a real live nautilus before! The picture is really dark, but from what I remember, they live in really deep water. It didn't seem to be very active, but I still thought that was a real treat to see.

The yellow seahorse is pretty, but I was really impressed with the sea urchins! Can that be real?

Seahorses are adorable! I can't help but love that it is the male that incubates the children. The glass work was beautiful inside the exhibits. The seahorses didn't seem to mind them at all.

I didn't know that cow fish liked cantaloupe!

Into the Wild Part 2

Although it wasn't quite an "into the wild" like the first adventure, Daisy and I made it up to the Umpqua Hot Springs in one piece. The fall colors are beautiful this time of the year, much more appealing to me than five feet of snow like the last time I visited.

We started down in Yachats for the annual mushroom festival. After observing the fungus among us, we drove up to the top of Cape Perpetua, and walked over to the rock building to check out the view hundreds of feet above sea level. So Beautiful......

From there, we headed south until we got to Reedsport, then started our journey up the Umpqua River. I decided I was going to camp overnight, and Daisy seemed to be fine with the idea. I stopped at a Safeway and bought some firewood, and then headed up highway 138, sixty miles out, and 2,500 feet up. By the time I got to the hotsprings, it was close to dusk. I jumped out of the car, observing my surrounding to be much different since the last time I had adventured up the road. The CXT building (shitter) had been buried in snow, but now, it was being used by some long haired hippie. The trees were once bare leafed, and weighed down with snow, now was a rainbow of leaves.

I made it up for my first soak just before the last orange was being sucked up by the night's sky. There was groups in two other pools, and a loner in another. As a loner, besides my dog, who I wasn't going to invite into the water with me, though for a second about joining the other loner in the spring. I decided against it, and sat in the top (also the hottest) spring, with Daisy sitting on the rock beside me. Since it was so hot, I only stayed in for 10 minutes at a time, then had to take a breather. I left after less than an hour and two beers.

There was a campground a mile or so down the road from the springs that I decided to stay at. We pulled into the A loop, and could tell there was a group of hunters camping out. We checked out the B loop, and it was totally empty. It was nice to be so alone, yet know that there was a big group of people not too far away. We had a fire, I had another beer, or three quarters of one, and hit the hay. It was the first time I let Daisy stay in the car with me. I think she enjoyed it very much.

We slept well. In the morning we took another trek up the mountain for an early morning soak. Once again, I didn't invite Daisy to soak with me. She sat next to me and watched me with great curiosity for the first few minutes. Then she seemed to get board, and fell back asleep.

I had all of the pools all to myself, it was so quiet, I could hear the leaves falling off the trees into the water.

This is a beautiful place.....