The Three Amigos

A few months ago, after watching the Three Amigos movie, Aaron and his friends decided to be the three amigos for Halloween. Their dream came true with much help from Grandma Jill. She found the black pants, and sewed their jackets, bow ties and cummerbunds. She even found frilly ribbon/lace to add to their white shirts. Ruth and I spray painted Chevy's hats (that Terry found). Grandma Weaver unpicked the logo and then we added their emblems. We used a TON of white puff-paint (sent us back to the 80's) and silver glitter galore! Rod found guns, holsters and even spray painted his own pair of brown boots! These boys are some of the luckiest around!

At the church dance Saturday night Sharon, Madison and Kiera dressed as "senioritas" and surprised the boys. They were not expecting a match to their costumes. Way too cute!

Red Ribbon Week

The week of October 19th-23rd was Red Ribbon Week at Antelope Crossing Middle School. Kim participated everyday, but I only captured two days in pictures. Monday was Sports day and she wore her Sacramento Kings jersey with Bibby's name on the back. (She said that lots of people reminded her that he didn't play there anymore, but we're still Bibby fans!) Tuesday was neon day (pictured below). Thanks Heather for the shirt, headband and glasses!
Wednesday was denim day and she wore her jeans and a denim headband. Thursday was hero day so she wore her (my) velcro shirt with "Be a Hero, Not a Zero" on the front and a sparkly cape to go with it.

On Friday for Music day she wore my HAPA concert t-shirt. She is a spirited girl!

Fun at Dave's House

Aaron LOVES this go-cart, even after a crazy drive with me when I threw him from the cart taking a turn too fast. Did I mention he was about 5 when that happened and he was scraped up quite a bit? As you can see he has recovered and overcome his fear of go-carts....and Dave installed seat belts since then also!

Dave takes Kim for a ride on his motorcycle and then Aaron takes her for a ride. She did drive the go-cart by herself and nearly crashed when she didn't take her foot off the accelerator and spun in a 180!

Kim's Pizza Project

For a few weeks Kimberlee has been wanting to make pizzas as a project she was working on. As a goal she had to plan, prepare and serve a nutritious meal. I'm not sure these pizzas qualified in all departments since I had to shop with her for the ingredients, we each had to prepare our own pizza and then we served ourselves! However, she still completed the family activity...

Germanium, junk, Beast & rain...need I say more??

GERMANIUM: Aaron has a mind that works unlike others. His Honors chemistry class had an assignment to make a molecule: complete with electrons, protons, neutrons, etc. He was assigned germanium and took this project to an extreme.
This wasn't an ordinary molecule, he wanted this one to actually rotate, so he used motors from an old DVD player and wired AA batteries to make each part rotate and spin.

JUNK: After school Aaron and Taylor saw that our neighbors down the street had a pile of junk in front of their house for a trash pick-up day. It seemed they brought half the pile to our driveway and side yard to disassemble and use for their Go-Cart project.

...old moving reindeer...

...fax machine...computer monitor...fan...lights...

...DVD player...weed eater...

...all kinds of pieces and parts...

...computer parts...

...even a lawn mower!

BEAST JR.: This is Beast Jr. The smaller version of "The Beast". Aaron built this rocket himself out of pieces, parts, tubes and cardboard. He launched it last week and said it worked great!

RAIN: During our big rain and wind storm yesterday Aaron and Taylor (together again) restaked my little trees so they wouldn't blow over in the wind. The storm was raining hard but they had an excuse to be outside doing something, so they didn't complain!

Picnic in the Park

On Saturday, September 12th the Antelope community Lyons Club hosted a free Picnic-in-the Park. There were only a few other vendors there so it was a perfect time to advertise my preschool! We had a cup game and gave away prizes and baloons with my business card attached. The weather was a bit weird but all in all it was a good day. My kids "helped" for awhile, too!

Our prize table. Dina stayed all day with me, what a great friend!

Fairy Falls Hike...Labor Day

Last year my mom gave me this great book called "60 hikes in 60 miles". It's loaded with 60 hikes around the Sacramento area that you can drive to within 60 miles...give or take a few. Today our family had a leisurely start to this hike, up near Camp Far West. It took us about an hour to get there. The lake was incredibly low so we wondered if there would be any falls flowing. We headed off on what the book described as a 5.8 mile hike, roundtrip.
It didn't take long before we thought we were lost, but we found some boysenberry bushes to nibble on and we were happy again!

Kim gathered quite a few. They all weren't terribly sweet, but we had fun picking anyway.

Farther down the trail, which was mostly in the sun, Aaron and I found these pinecones. He wanted a "before and after picture"...before squirrel and after squirrel. It was pretty amazing, these pinecones are heavy and thick!

This is the one Aaron decided to carry around for awhile.

The trail was well marked and easy to follow most of the way, and good hills to climb, too!

When we found the falls Aaron was the first to walk out.

Kim was a bit nervous about the edge.

We stopped at the top of the falls to eat our PB&J and other snacks we carried in our hydration packs. Aaron used his knife to pry the pine nuts out of the pinecone.

We set the timer on the camera a took a quick family photo.

The water was rushing pretty fast.

I loved the way this partof the falls made a zig-zag!

This is the pool we hiked down to.

Kim and I decided to put our feet in while the boys opted for a swim!

After a refreshing water soak we packed up and set back for home.

We took some pictures on the way out because it was hard to believe that hidden behind this dry grassy area was a beautiful waterfall. We would've never believed it!

Happy Trails to you....