We went to the school's fundraiser fair tonight, the Ohana (family) fun fair. They had a big inflated slide and bounce houses along with some rides. There were a bunch of games that the kids could play too and win little prizes. The kids both had a good time. Cole surprised me though, there was one ride there that had a really long line. Adam didn't want to wait in the line but Cole decided that he wanted to ride that ride. He stood in line with me and waited patiently for probably a half an hour. He never complained once or even asked when it would be our turn. When we first got in the back of the line I even tried to talk him out of it, but he wanted to ride THAT RIDE. So I waited in that line with him the whole time. I had planned on riding with him, but the lady running the ride said most adults are pretty squashed in there, so I grabbed Adam and he got to ride with Cole. He had the biggest grin on his face the WHOLE time.

Here we are, getting ready for the big candy event of the year...
We met up with two other families and headed out around the neighborhood in search of sugar.
They were all so cute and they really had a good time going door to door and walking the neighborhood seeing all the other kids dressed up.
Now what do we do with all this candy? They each filled a gallon ziploc bag when we got home. I've found a few prize pieces in their bags (Andes orange chocolates, among others, Mmmm). It's all downhill from here calorie-wise. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. That's why we all make new year's resolutions!!

Since Adam was off school (again!) we went to the Bishop museum to see the Dinosaurs exhibit. It was a lot like the exhibit that we saw back in St. Louis before we moved. There were lots of animatronic dinosaurs along with some smaller fossilized pieces. Adam thought it was great, but Cole was not quite so sure. Some of them he would check out and others he gave this suspicious look at or ran away. There were quite a lot of moving, roaring dinosaurs in one section, so he was a little freaked out.

Then today we went to the MOMS Club Halloween party, so I dressed up the little monsters for the party (ok, so they were a skeleton and a robot, and they didn't act too monstrous today). But Adam managed to find something to be mad about even on his way to the party, and thus the grumpy picture. Oh well.
Now on to the real candy-fest tomorrow - - Halloween! We're heading out to trick-or-treat the neighborhood with friends. It should be a good time.

I got some things on clearance after halloween last year, so we spooked the place up a little bit for Halloween this year. MOMS Club took a trip to the pumpkin farm to get our pumpkins for the year too. And some cute pumpkin pictures!!
Mom's little pumpkin :)
Little strongman...
This pumpkin that he picked out just happened to be rotten inside when we went to carve it. Eeewww. Good thing we got two pumpkins.

My blogging is so far behind now it is pitiful. Taking over the MOMS club presidency has taken a lot of time and energy. I think I've got a handle on things but it still just takes a chunk of time each week.

So I'm finally blogging about the trip we took in early October. Well, at least october isn't over yet before I post. The weather was nice when we first got there but then they were predicting a freeze, so grandpa, grandma and the boys went up to pick all the tomatoes off the plants. Since it was such a cool summer there were still tons of green tomatoes there.
I took the boys on a little hike up the hill behind the house and they had a really good time just walking through the woods and exploring. Something they don't get much of a chance to do anywhere else.

We went out on the Friday we were there to see Split Rock Lighthouse. The boys had never seen it and it had been years since I had been there. And the weather was absolutely beautiful that day. Here's a view of Lake Superior, it certainly is gorgeous scenery (and this comes from someone living in Hawaii!).


The next day was Katie and Josh's wedding. It was a very nice ceremony and they had the old union hall all decked out for the reception. It looked great! It was FREEZING this day and really windy though!
Dan and I at the reception
Mom & Dad at Katie's reception
All the siblings together...
It was nice to have everyone together to catch up and see what's new. Here is Cole below with cousin Laura.We had a nice relaxing visit, but since it was so cold at the end of our visit, it was nice to come back home to warm up!

Now we'll see if I can make some progress catching up on some more blogging!

A little late, but here's the ride report for the Honolulu Century Ride we did at the end of September. It was an early start, I think we left the house at 4:30 or some very early hour like that to drive downtown. We met up with the Hawaii On Tandems group and we headed out at 5:50am, a little before the mass start. It was still dark heading out:
We had a little rain early on in the ride, but we didn't get too wet. It cleared up quickly to a rather nice day. It was kind of crazy windy early on in the day, we were riding into it for portions of the ride out. Somehow I don't remember having a tailwind on the way back though...
The scenery was spectacular as always. Looking out over Manana island in the morning sun:
Everyone got to the first rest stop at Sandy beach in good spirits. We had a few snacks and generated a lot of interest on the triple. A couple from India stopped us to take our picture there, his wife stood by us and grabbed onto my arm like we were old buddies.

We hit every rest stop along the way to make sure everyone was happy. They had oranges, pretzels, sports drink and bananas at pretty much all the stops. The kids filled up on LOTS of oranges. More comments and pictures at the second rest stop. At least we got someone to take our picture with my camera:

Here we are at the rest stop that is the 75 mile turnaround. Everyone still in good spirits and there really has been no whining up to this point.
We found a nice little playground park tucked in amidst some condos. The kids really had a good time on the equipment they had here since it was different from the rest of the playgrounds around.

We did 75 miles and the kids did absolutely great. Nobody complained and I didn't even break out the bribery snacks (suckers and fruit snacks) until literally the last few miles of the ride. Adam chatted away the entire ride and sang the entire repertoire of songs he has learned in Kindergarten (over and over). We met the goal I was shooting for and so I was very happy with the ride. I was a little disappointed in the pictures that the ride photographer took, but he got great shots of us last year.
Now maybe soon I'll catch up on some more blogging!

It's been quite a while since I've posted again. I just don't know where all my time goes sometimes. We've been pretty much into the school routine during the week and biking on the weekends trying to be ready for the Honolulu Century ride next weekend.

Here's a few random pictures I've taken during the month. The one on the right is the new building Dan has been putting up, he took us out to the farm to see the changes last weekend.This weekend we did a morning ride and then after lunch and shower we headed out to the airshow at Hickam Air Force Base. The traffic heading into base was pretty heavy and they parked us in a HUGE lot (it was actually an airfield just outside the hangar area). We took a shuttle over to the show and I think Cole thought that was the best part (we walked back to the truck at the end instead of taking the shuttle and when I asked him how he liked the show he said 'I wanted to ride the bus again').

Cole on the bus

Just took a quickpage template and dressed it up a bit. I like how it turned out.

I see that I'm falling behind updating the blog again. We've been busy, I compiled a bunch of pictures above (you can get a better view if you click on it). We went on a glass bottom boat tour in Kaneohe bay. This was a neat trip, the boat had little square portholes all along the seating area to look out the bottom. You couldn't see colors very well but you could see the coral and fish, we even saw a turtle through the bottom. The kids also got to go sit up on top in front of the boat and later feed some fish. So everyone had a really good time on the trip.

This past Friday, Adam was off school (teachers workshop already!) so we went to Ko'Olina beach. This is normally packed on the weekends, but there were hardly a half dozen groups of people when we got there. We spent over four hours there and the kids just had a good time digging, swimming, and looking a the clouds. Then they found another boy to play with and that entertained them for another hour. So I really had a relaxing day at the beach since they were pretty much self-entertained. We were there so long we all got a little sunburned, but we stayed out of the sun Saturday and it faded pretty quickly.

I got a little crafty the other night (i.e. I broke out the craft supplies!). I had bought some fabric at Walmart that had Scooby Doo on it because Adam likes scooby doo so much. When we got it I really had not idea what I was going to do with it, but then I thought of making a pillowcase. Adam loved the idea, so we went ahead and made him a Scooby Doo pillowcase. He was very happy with it.

Today we went biking up on the north shore. We were supposed to meet up with the tandem biking group but never did hook up with them. We had a nice ride anyways, riding over to Laie and then back again. We saw the Mormon temple there - it was right by the elementary school playground. Since we got an early start, there was not much traffic on the way out once we got past some of the popular beaches.

Now tomorrow it's back to school for Adam, I don't yet know what Cole and I will be up to. Maybe get a walk or run in and then hang out or run errands.