Happy Halloween!

Today we shared the joy of trick-or-treating as a family. Elena felt that dressing up was overrated, so she went as herself-- a bean sprout.
Elena made the rounds and was able to visit her grandparents and great-grandpa, with the exception of Grampies as he was out of town. W e even had a little time leftover to stop and see some friends. Here is a picture of Alex and Katie dressed in their pirate costumes with Elena. Again, it's impossible to get a picture of 3 children smiling and looking at the camera simultaneously.

Wishing everyone a spooktacular Halloween!

Gardening

Barry is off hunting this weekend, and Elena and I decided to enjoy the last of the warm weather. We've just started to harvest the fall garden. Barry and I planted lettuce, kale, garlic, and radishes a few weeks ago.

Despite the smaller garden size and cool start to the growing season, we still had adequate amounts of produce. It was a beautiful day and a great way to start the weekend.

Eight Months

Elena has officially reached the eight month mark. Over the last month she's becoming more vocal, mobile, and (sometimes) sleeping longer at night. Now that she's more animated, it's becoming more difficult to get a decent picture of her and puppy. This was one of the first pictures I took.
Elena is deciding that it would be more fun to crawl on the couch than pose for a pic.

She's already tried to eat her socks and puppy has been tossed aside. Photo shoot over.

Back in the Saddle

This weekend we took advantage of the nice weather and decided to take the horses out. It's been way too long since we've been riding- must have something to do with the little one, or maybe it's that the big one is spending his weekends hunting. Here are Barry and Dad getting ready.
Sprout isn't quite ready for her own horse, so she was traveling in style in the backpack.

It was a nice day and the horses enjoyed the outing. Sprout even took a power nap during the ride. I'm not sure how she managed to fall asleep, but she is always full of surprises.

Things That Crawl

So today I worked on the Snake River near King Hill, crawling around on the river bottom. While I was gone, Elena decided to do some crawling of her own for the first time. Karen's first attempt to catch her on video crawling was a great failure (Nana, since you made the blanket, this might be hard to watch!) Be sure to pay attention at the end of the clip.



...but Karen did successfully document Elena crawling:

My New Fort

Like most kids, I always wanted a fort or tree house when I was growing up. Well, at the age of 33, I finally made it happen. I found it on Craigslist and spent the weekend staining and assembling it. Here I am enjoying the slide on my new fort. There is rock climbing wall next to the slide, but I hadn't installed it prior to checking out the slide.I decided to let Elena play on my swing for a little bit. I don't really mind sharing the swing with her since the infant swing is too small for me anyway. From the video you will notice that Karen is confused as to whom the fort is for, but I guess you'll have that.