Trick or Treat & Kennedy Creek

It's been a great autumn around here. The colors have been great! I overheard someone say this was due to a few early (& light) frosts, combined with a general lack of precip for the past month. Some old timers have said this is the best year for fall colors they can remember. We'll take it! So will Matty. We decided to take a quick trip to Kennedy Creek today to check out the November Chum Salmon run. And to check out the massive maple leaves. And to let The Mighty Matanuska run wild & run free - just the way a puppy should live.

Abigail has been fun lately. Sure, she has her moments, but it's fun to see her develop. For instance, this morning in the living room she handed the cracker box to Melis, saying 'dgish' - which has become her standard word for everything from 'what is this' to 'I want this.' Melissa told her to get a plate to put some one, so she walks confidently into the kitchen where I am, and starts looking in the tupperware cupboard, where she grabs a tupperware and brings it right back to Mom for her bowl of crackers. Kids learn so fast!But I digress. Here we all pose for a big-happy-family shot.

My three favorite girls!

Finally Abee gets let out of the backpack so she can run wild & run free too!

This area is about 15 minutes NW of our house, just off of Hwy 101. There's a thick web of old logging roads that go every different direction once you get back in there a ways. But we didn't go too far past the area best for viewing salmon. Supposedly, there are around 30,000 chum salmon that come up this small creek every year. I'm not sure how they all fit! This is still pretty early in the season, so we only saw a handful of them. Anyone care to make a puzzle out of this? Melissa was thinking of Halloween a month ago already. She saw this tiger costume in Costco and couldn't resist. For the last month, we've been asking Abee 'What sound does a tiger make?', to which she often replies 'Raaawwwwrrr!' (with varying degrees of ferocity).

Melis & I took her over to our neighbors house, where we visited for quite a while. We reminisced about Halloween three years ago, when Melis & I got access to our newly-purchased house. We spend the evening cleaning the floors, walls, & anything else that needed it. I seem to remember us both having sore backs for the next few days. Yeah for our house! She wasn't a big fan of the hood, but tolerated it for a few pictures.

She isn't always this happy when she's tired, but after a while, she'd just lay her head down on the couch or the floor for a bit and rest, before regaining her energy for a few more minutes.

Pumpkins & Leaves

After a trip down to a conference in Anaheim for me (hi Koning & Vander Linde clan!) and a short week in Utah for Melis & Abee (hi everyone in Utah!), life is back to normal (as normal as it gets for us). We were greeted upon our return with great fall weather.

Capitol Lake is a great spot to run, play or just enjoy a nice day. Melis often walks/runs around it, and Abee was thankful for some time outside of her jogging stroller! She and her friend Lucy are enjoying the crispy leaves.

Practicing those runnin' skills!

An old piling in front of a railroad tressel.Our veggie crop was pretty meager this year. Abigail didn't really help it out too much. . .but she does enjoy both picking and eating tomatos!
Our TNBS (Tues Night Bible Study) carved pumpkins again this year. We're still finding seeds in places like behind our toaster. I wonder how they got there. . . ;-)

The fruit of our labor (or are they veggies?).

A 30 second exposure of the clouds lit up above Oly.

Lattin's Cider Mill

A trip to Lattin's Cider Mill every fall has quickly become a family tradition for us. And for good reason. Not only do they have a petting zoo with all sorts of farm animals, an apple sling-shot that you can aim at a target in a field filled with cows (the target is optional), a tractor/hay ride driven by a wild-bearded old farmer, award winning apple cider, a pumpkin patch, but they have hands-down the best apple fritters on the planet!

Unfortunately for Abee, the most humorous part of our trip involved a goat in the same pen as pictured above. She'd fed a few sheep with the grain I'd pick off the ground, and seemed to enjoy the animals licking her palm. But when one particularly large goat became frustrated that Abigail wasn't standing close enough to easily get the treat, it let out a deep grunting sound. I personally didn't really know goats could make that particular sound. Abee didn't either - she fell back into my arms, and a few seconds later decided to let the goat know that making that sound was definitely uncalled for. The tears falling down her face helped emphasize her point.

Pardon the plethora of kid pics below. . .but I thought the fam might enjoy them. Kisses!? What's up with that?! Get those yucky wet lips off my cheeks! That's my girl!
On the wild-man's hay ride, with Brian, Hudson, Jocelyn, & Bristol.
Now this is what I came for! Give me more of that fritter!!!
I know, it's a little early for a boy to have his arms around my daughter on a park bench. . .so I'm glad to say she looks a little skeptical (no offense Hudson).

We have a park a couple of blocks away that we often go to on a whim (like we did tonight). We're often the only ones there. It has plenty of grass for Matty to romp around in, and Abee loves the tennis courts and the play area. Here you get a flash of Matanuska fur in the foreground. Hmmm. . .what mischief can I get into?
Speaking of mischief, she's quickly learning what no means. When she gets told 'no,' she'll shake her head no, leave what she doing (usually), and get a big smile on her face. I'm not sure if the smile is from her being proud of herself for understanding what we're saying to her, or if she's just being a stinker. I'm afraid it's probably the latter.
Yup, she does love her books.
And she gets quite a kick out of playing peak-a-boo.
On a not-so-happy note, we found out two weeks ago that our pellet stove has a hole in the exhaust pipe, and the repair man recommended not using it. We were hoping to replace that anyway in the next couple of years. If that wasn't enough, our gas furnace stopped working a few days ago. So after a few failed attempts to fix the furnace (my best guess what that the flux capacitor wasn't getting the 1.21 gigawatts that it needed), I turned my attention to the pellet stove. There's something motivating about waking up to a house that's 57 degrees, and no way to warm it up! The good news is, I spent $12 on materials to patch the exhaust pipe behind the pellet stove, and that's up and working. The bad news is that my fears about the the furnace came true. That's going to be a $600 fix. Ouch. Maybe I can talk Melis into using only the pellet stove for heat this winter ;-)

Saturday @ Rainier

Ohanapecosh & Bench Lakes

On Friday morning, our friend Malissa was gracious enough to do a photo shoot at Tumwater Falls with our family (including Matty Sioux). We know that anytime you're dealing with a kid, you never know how it'll work out. From our perspective on Friday, it didn't work well at all. Abigail didn't cooperate, and it wasn't until the very last pic that Mal took did she even think about giving some semblance of a smile. But she's good enough to even make an unhappy baby look good. Check out a few of the photos she got here. All of them are amazing, but my favorite is the B&W one.

On Saturday we took advantage of the nice summer weather that's holding out for us, and headed up in the Corolla with Kristin & Michelle to the SE Corner of Mt Rainier NP. None of us had been there before, but it came highly recommended by some friends. Now the little stinker decided to give us some smiles. She's all about doing things in her own timing. Something this week clicked with her walking. She's been capable of it for a few weeks now, but this week she made huge improvements, and she was glad to show those off wherever we allowed her to.
' Uh. . .Auntie Kristin. . .don't you think this is a little big for me?'

Some hot springs on the way to Silver Falls.
Silver Falls itself.
Thanks for holding still for a 1.3 second exposure, Kristin!
'Hmmm, what trouble can I get into around here?'
Walking in the woods with Mom & Dad.Smilin' with Mama.
With the Aunties
'Guys, I promise, you can let go now.'
'See, I told you so!'Some of the alpenglow just above Snow Lake, not far from Paradise.
Upper Bench Lake, about 1 minute after the sun went down. . .about 30 seconds after we arrived, out of breath.
Thanks for being a trooper, Abee!
We had plenty of moonlight to walk back with.
The final remnants of the day get swallowed below the horizon (it took a 20 second exposure to capture this shot with as little light as there was there!).