Pumpkin Carving Day

Sunday, October 26, 2008 was our 4th annual Pumpkin Carving Day, and the second time with Janelle's mother Stacia and sister Amy. As usual, the boys were distracted with the football game on TV, but eventually we got all of the pumpkins carved and the pumpkin seeds baked.

See below for the individual carvers with their pumpkins (my apologies to Amy for no picture with her finished product, so I substituted her work in progress).

For any of you who haven't heard the news yet, Janelle and Mark are going to be parents, on or around June 8th. This was the first time that we had all been together since we heard the news, so baby talk was the topic of most conversation. I think the new parents-to-be were completely overwhelmed. They better get used to it!

Weekend with Marley

On October 17th through the 19th Marley came to spend the weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's. These are some of the highlights:

Climbing the tree in the back yard for the first time

Learning how to jump rope

Buying some grass for Izzy at the pet store

Going to the Indian Pow Wow at the Springfield Science Museum

Going to the Great Pumpkin Adventure

Playing on the hay bales

Getting caught in mid-air

Going on a hayride

Posing for pictures

Picking out pumpkins

This was the weekend that Toby's aunt and our good friend, Susan Carrington, lost her battle with leukemia. We were all very sad, but we tried to keep Marley busy with some fun things. We are all going to miss "Auntie Sue."

Another Note From Debbie's Technical Team

If you want to see a larger screensize version of Debbie's embedded slideshows, click on the picture portion of the slideshow. This will bring you to Picasa where the albums are stored. Then click on "Slideshow" and you should get a slideshow with larger images.

If you want to see even larger images in the Picassa slideshow, and are using Internet Explorer, you can then hit the F11 key (or) hit the "Full Screen" icon at the top (or) select "Full Screen" from the View drop-down menu. The slideshow will automatically get larger to fill the larger space.

Weekend Vacation in Maine 2008

Paul and I went to Maine the weekend of October 3rd to October 6th. We didn't think we were going to be able to make it this Fall, but at the last minute things worked out for us to go. When we were younger we used to take two weekends a year without the kids at the Cape. We love the Cape but in recent years we have been going to Maine for our weekends. We love hanging out (and shopping) at LL Bean. On Sunday we took a ride up to Booth Bay Harbor. It was beautiful there, sunny and cool with the leaves changing. On the way back to Freeport we stopped in Wiscasset at an old fashioned general store. There was a cat sitting in the window who looked exactly like my old cat George. We spent some time petting him and as we were leaving I saw a sign that said "Hi, I'm George the Cat." I couldn't believe it. I had to tell the owner that I had also had a cat named George who looked just like him. After we left there we walked across the street and had scallops at Red's Eats, and then explored around a state park called Reid State Park near Bath. There are just so many beautiful places around there. On our way home on Monday we drove all around Old Orchard Beach and had fried dough near the pier. It was such a fun weekend!

The Bee Hunter

This summer we noticed that bees were flying in and out of a nest that was somewhere behind the siding at the corner of our house. We basically ignored them; they left us alone and so we left them alone. That is, until we started seeing a few bees inside the house. Izzy spotted them and, of course, chased them. We decided it was time to do something about them. First, Paul bought some sort of bee and wasp spray and tried spraying it in where he saw the bees going. He went through three bottles of the spray and still bees were coming and going. So.... not to be outsmarted by bees, Paul came up with a plan to suck them up as they entered and exited the hole. He set up an old vacuum cleaner with the wand right up to the hole where the bees were flying in and out. He held the wand up there for about an hour before "tying" it to a ladder. You could actually see the bees getting sucked into the wand. Unfortunately, while we were at work, the old vacuum motor burnt out and whatever bees that were still alive when the vac. died, marched right out of the top of the wand. The next day, the bees were back to flying in and out as though nothing had happened.

P.S. Paul is not finished yet. Today he started again with another old vacuum, only now he turns the vac. off while we are away and tapes up the end of the wand. To be continued......!