Halloween!!!

Halloween is so much fun when you have kids!  Austin has been really looking forward to it.  He went as the Red Dragon Knight.  Danny loves trains so he was a train conductor.  I even made a train for him to drive.  He loved the train but hated wearing it!  I had to bribe him with a lollipop to get him to wear it!  Danny got the hang of trick or treating pretty quickly.  He would walk up to someone and just say "treat", no "tricks for him!

We went all out in the kitchen and had a Halloween table, complete with a glittered chandelier!  The boys had a great time using their Halloween dishes.

Pumpkin carving time!

My Halloween nails coordinate with our Halloween colored Pippa!

Out trick or treating.  You can see how "happy" Danny is with his train!

Rainy Day Ramblings

It is a cold and rainy morning, the kind of morning when you wish you could just stay cuddled up in bed. Hopefully the power won't go out again today. It was out several times yesterday because one huge tree took down 3 power poles. It was out for 2 days last week because of the storm. It actually like it when the power goes out, it can be a fun adventure. But I have a lot of things to get done this week and having power makes life so much easier!
We have all been sick at one point these past 2 weeks. Austin was out of school for a whole week because of it. He was a real trooper though and found all sorts of fun ways to keep himself entertained. Here are some of the projects he thought up:

Nothing is trash to Austin. He will find a way to turn it into something. This is a submarine. After a test run in the tub, the foam parts dissolved. He is now currently making a new one out of better materials.

Austin loves to use tape. This day he taped some foam pieces together and made ski poles and taped some skis to his feet.

He built a train track, but it couldn't be just a regular train track. His had to have ramps and bridges.I love to see his creativity and his imagination come to life!

Luckily Danny was not sick for very long. He was just pretty grumpy and slept a lot. He and Austin have the typical sibling love/hate relationship. I have been having to do a lot of refereeing lately and trying to teach then how to get along. I am worried about what will happen when they realize that they can get along to use their immense powers of mischievousness against me!
Here are some cute pictures of my little Danny man recently:
Playing motorcycle cop:Chasing after Bryce at one of Austin baseball games:

This past weekend I got to spend a day up in Sacramento with my friend Melinda, at the scrapbook expo, which was all sorts of fun! I came home with all sorts of new ideas and fun projects! It was fun for Melinda and I to have some time together with out being distracted by little ones! This is one of the projects I started at the expo. I still have to finish adding on the embellishments but I really love it!
Bryce had 3 weeks of vacation, during which he grew a beard! I was surprised that I missed it once he shaved it off. He also drove out with my dad to Utah to replace my Grandma's roof. I really wanted to go too, but I am glad I choose not to because that is when both boys were at their sickest points!The guys got the roof off in one day, and the new one on the next! Amazing! Here is my brother Trevor and my Dad hard at work:
The day Bryce went back to work is the day that the storm hit and the day he started to get sick. He has been miserable this past week but finally seems to be on the mend.
Here's a funny Bryce story:
Yesterday, because of the tree that took down the 3 poles, the main road in and out of the canyon was closed. The only alternate route is a very narrow one lane road. Instead of peolpe spacing out so that there was room to pull over and pass in the turnouts, everyone was jamming together and trying to get 5-10 cars going one way, past 5-10 cars going the other way all at once. It was miserable, frustrating and very time consuming. Well, at the worst part of the road, Bryce got fed up wathcing people trying figure out how to work it out so he got out and started directing traffic. I had to keep driving down the hill to the main road to get our car out of the way. Once it was all cleared up Bryce got a ride with a good samaritan down the hill to where we were waiting. The good samaritan told Bryce that he had done a real good job and that he should be a traffic cop. Bryce just smiled and laughed.

Really and Truely "Old Fashioned" Black and Whites

While at Wilder Ranch a while back I lugged around 2 cameras because I wanted to shoot a roll of real black and white film in addition to my ever present digital Rebel. It has taken forever to get them developed and back but I was finally able to pick them up the other day, and here they are!

Civil War Days, Fresno, CA

(sorry the pictures turned out so small! You can click on them to see them bigger!)

We just returned from a wonderful weekend in Fresno, CA. We were at Kearney Park for the Civil War Days. It used to big, open fields, with a mansion set right in the middle of nowhere. Now it is a beautiful park, full of trees and green grass.

There was so much to see and do, and I really enjoyed it all. We watched a blacksmith make a lantern hook, that stakes into the ground. That was Austin's favorite. We watched artisans spin wool into yarn, weave on a loom and make lace. There was always music being played somewhere; the fiddle, the drums, the bugle, the fife, which made for a fun atomsphere. We listened to 2 ladies from Ebony Verses, who were portraying Harriet Tubman and Sorjourner Truth, sing some of the songs that the slaves would use to pass along coded messages about escape. That was my favorite part. Their voices were so beautiful! We also toured the mansion. It was built in 1903 and still had so much of the original furniture, wall paper and paintings. It was lovely.

Bryce and I had an actual tintype taken of us. It was fun to watch the process. It took about 10 minutes to prepare and take the photo. We had to hold still for about 5 seconds, so that wasn't too bad. It then took another 45 minutes to finish processesing and dry. It is quite an art form!

Danny loved to play in the trees, which I loved because it kept him busy and close to the camp! He also loved to follow the big boys around and try and play battle with them. It was very cute but someone needs to teach that boys how to hold a rifle!
Austin was very busy running wild with his friends, and traing with the cadets. But by Sunday afternoon, he had come down with a fever and all he wanted to do was sleep. Poor guy, but it did allow me to get an amazing shot of him.
Bryce was finally able to get his musket, and it made him a very happy boy! The stock is walnut and very beautiful but I didn't think to get a close up shot of it. I am sure will have me rectify that soon!
The pics of me are kind of random. The first one, I was just loving the evening sunlight, and the second one I was just messing around in the tent.
Here are some more random pics. The first is of the flags at day break. The next is of the park at sunset. Then the camp ground at night under a beautiful moon. And finally some lanterns. I love the magical glow that the lanterns give to the campground at night!