Trunk-or Treat

Each year, our ward (church congregation) celebrates Halloween by providing a fun, safe place to dress up and get candy. In order to get adults there in the festive spirit, they ply our competitive natures by offering food and prizes for decorating the car. Not ones to pass up a competition, Nate and I decided that this year was the year - we were going to win that trophy. Nate is great at getting the theme and I'm great at ideas. He is much better at implementing and I am a fabulous nagger. May I present the 2008 "Best Decorated Car" from the Memorial Park Ward Trunk or Treat...

Our jackets say "FORENSICS" across the back, and Ben's shirt says POLICE. Our friend who is an arson investigator donated some evidence bags and we came up with the rest. The CD player played "The Who" songs which are the theme music from all 3 CSIs. Nate and I fingerprinted suspects in between offering candy body parts out of the evidence bags to the little trick-or-treaters. (We had some back-up candy for the squeamish ones". It was great fun.

Camporee

Scout Camping Trip this weekend. Nate and Ben seem resigned to the fact that they have to go spend 24 hours camping, eating smuggled junk food, hanging with other guys and communicating in grunts (or whatever it is they do at scouts).

I, on the other hand can hardly wait for them to leave so that I can have the whole house to myself and enjoy complete and total silence for 24 hours.

Ben practiced his lashing at the past few scout meetings. Lashing is not his favorite pastime.

Just after Nate and Ben left, I cleaned the kitchen and the fridge and then tried to go grocery shopping. But the Jeep wouldn't start. So I stayed home. It was great! I slept for 10 hours, read a book, watched the OSU football game, and relaxed.

Evidently all the scouts and their leaders got a symphony of Nate's snoring. I'll bet they think I'm a saint. ;-) Just kidding, dear.

Ben got up to cook breakfast early this morning. Temperatures were in the low 50's - cold weather for Houstonians.

The scouts spent time showing off their skills. They had to lash together sticks to make a tower. I don't have a picture of the final product, but I do know that Ben appreciated the help he got from the other troops he spent time with in summer camp.

Everyone made it home safe and sunburned, and my house is noisy again. (but I'm much more patient since I had a break).

Harvest Moon

Well, I was going to make this an educational blog entry, but the Harvest Moon actually occurred in September. Tonight's full moon will be the Hunter's Moon - not the theme here. Below you can see our first harvest from our garden. Nate said the squirrels were eyeing our garden, so he went out to check and found that we have green beans! As you can see above, our radishes and lettuce are doing nicely too. The carrots are covered by the bush beans and may not make it. We planted 3 squares of broccoli today. It should be ready around Thanksgiving or a little later. Gardening in Houston does work! Just the timing is weird.

Life lately...

It is hard to believe that a month has passed since we were visited by Ike. The debris is slowly being hauled away from the neighborhoods. Most of the traffic lights are functional, and life is much more normal.

We drove out to High Island today hoping that the salt domes had eroded and fossils would be laying there waiting to be picked up. The good news is that the salt domes have eroded, bad news is that the beach eroded first. Now when you drive at low tide, the ocean is only about 15 feet away from the road - even with the salt dome. No beach to walk along to search the bottom edge of the domes. Debris is everywhere - pieces of houses, shoes, furniture, trash, and just stuff. Many of the people out on this first weekend of the road being open were scavenging. One family looked as if they were looking for their own belongings. We drove out about 2-3 miles through very rough, gullied salt dome and road. It wasn't pretty. As we drove south on 124, the electric poles were snapped between 6-10 feet up nearly the whole way from I-10. The damage was so extensive, that the electric companies were replacing the poles on the opposite side of the road. I hope they'll go back and clean up the old wires and poles since it's a huge mess. We'll come back in December when the crowds are gone and maybe some sand has washed back up.

Ben has been very busy with school back in session. His grades remain good (except math) and he is praised often for his natural talent on the French Horn by his band director. He achieved his first class rank in scouts and 7 merit badges. He has had a few service hours through scouts as well.

Nate is very busy at work with tons of hurricane guns to restore as well as the busy season work.

Kim is off the crutches and slowing weaning away from the boot. I can't believe how weak my leg has become. I feel like I have noodle knees when I spend a little time in a regular shoe. The conference in Nashville was very informative and I enjoyed the area. My coworkers and I spent one night in downtown. I especially enjoyed the live bands. Then we spent another evening exploring the Gaylord Opryland - very cool.