Month: October 2007

This was the sight from my backyard this morning. There was an eerie orange glow over everything outside this morning. Thank goodness the winds have finally died down. Now maybe the air will start to clear up.

This is the glass table in my backyard. Everything is covered in ash from the fires. Luckily, we are in no danger from the fires, but we are suffering the effects of the ash. The kids are going stir crazy from not being allowed to play outside. The schools are keeping the kids inside all day and I haven’t been letting them play outside either. All their soccer practices have been canceled this week too. Hopefully the air quality will be back to normal by Saturday so they can play their games.

This shows the ash on my car. Without the wind, the ash is just raining down on everything!

We spent the day in Oak Glen. We drove up this morning after church. The drive up was a bit harrowing. The winds were blowing so hard that it was pushing the car. At times, the dust was so thick you could barely see the car in front of you. We we got there, we had a picnic lunch in Oak Knolls Park. After the lunch, the kids went on a hike with Daddy. I stayed with Falyn and Samantha. I had fun chasing Falyn around trying to get pictures of her. She found a tree that had a hole at the bottom of it that was filled with acorns. She preceded to pick up all the acorns she could find and put the in that tree.

Here she is putting acorns in the tree.

Here she is with an acorn in her hand.

This is my favorite of the pictures I took of her.

After the kids and Dan came back from their walk, we went over to the U-Pick area and pick apples. The kids had so much fun! Even Falyn go in on the apple picking.

After we finished picking apples, we went to the store and got a gallon of apple cider, a fresh baked apple pie, and cinnamon apple syrup to bring back home with us.

Luckily, while we were at Oak Glen, the winds were not blow hard. They were still high winds on the drive back though. We even drove by an area where we saw a fire starting. We later learned it was the Santiago Canyon fire that we saw.

There is a huge spiderweb in the backyard. It is on the play equipment between the slide/fort part and one of the swings. The kids are terrified of it. I explained to them that it wouldn’t hurt them and it just eats bugs. But they still won’t get anywhere near it.

We’ve been adding to our Little People Christmas stuff each year for several years now. We already have the Manger, Little Drummer Boy and Shepard’s sets. This year I decided to add the Musical Christmas Train. It arrived a few minutes ago and the twins begged me to set it up. I thought I should make sure all the parts are there, so I went ahead and set it up on the dinning room table. It looks funny with the Halloween table cloth under it! I will let it stay up till we pick up Talia, Kayli and Aidan from school, so they can see it too. Then it will go up with the rest of the Christmas stuff till the day after Thanksgiving.

This weekend is our church festival. We were there all afternoon (12:30 – 4:30). I’m exhausted! I took all the kids by myself. We had lunch there and then rode rides. Falyn went on her first ride. She loved it! She threw a huge fit when she had to get off. The boys and Kayli went on the tilt-a-wheel, swings, little rollercoaster and the big spiral slide. We are going to go back again tomorrow evening.