Christmas morning at our house

Jeepers

The Jeep is really ready to roll. And Greg and Scott took it out for some fun on Saturday.

Korn Maze!!

Yesterday afternoon, Greg and I went to Uesugi Farms in San Martin (Morgan Hill area) to walk through their corn maze. Yay! Was very fun. First we took a trip to Butterfly Valley on a tractor pulled cart.

We knew there wouldn't be any *real* butterflies but were promised some beautiful flowers. It ended up being a lesson in the life cycle of a butterfly. Loved it! And then we came to the flower field.

I was on the left side of the cart thus took my pictures on that side but there were just as many flowers on the other side of the field - it was really very beautiful. And yes, that is the great pumpkin rising in the background there.

Back to the masses, we wandered the farm. After loading the pictures I was disappointed that the sunflowers are all facing the wrong way but makes sense, I was north of the flowers and the sun is south.

Greg was intrigued by the pumpkin pyramid. I was sorry to have to tell him it wasn't solid pumpkins. :-) A closer look you can see the dirt so he would have figured it out soon enough.

We did not ride the trains but you can see they have two. One is a train train the other a cow train which is metal barrels on wheels painted like cows. So cute and funny. Parents are a little big for the seats.

Just in case you're thinking of making a pumpkin pie out of your own Halloween pumpkin, here's a tip.

The farm has an attraction called Pumpkin Blasters. There was a line for this. Two blasters, 3 shots for 5 bucks. We didn't do it but we did watch for a bit. We never figured out what the ammo was but I have a feeling it was little pumpkins. If you can't tell, there is an old truck out there with big pumpkins to shoot at as well as round bull's-eye targets.

Yeah - those are big pumpkins.

Time for the maze.

We used all of these questionaires to help us turn the right direction at certain points (we could have taken just one questionaire but figured the more we had, the better chance we had of getting an answer right).

Greg's ready to go. Doesn't he look excited?

He wasn't really excited. He just wanted to do it because I wanted to. I didn't realize how much he wasn't into it until we were half way through the questions. The picture of the questionaires I posted shows they have 5 questions - there were 5 more on the back. Greg didn't know that! So in the maze, when we came to marker 6 Greg was surprised. He thought we were almost done but there were 5 more markers to find. I'm surprised he expressed his disappointment but sure made for a good laugh. He was so funny when he confessed - and lucky for him the second 5 went much faster than the first. He's a good sport. We couldn't leave without buying some pumpkins. We thought the prices were great. Ended up our bigger pumpkins were buy one get one free. Even better. Now that made Greg happy!

It was a beautiful evening. I tried to capture it with photos - but cell phone...eh. Here are a couple anyway. Was a great time. I'm so glad we went.

FILOLIIF

It means FILOLI in Fall. I went to Filoli today with Joslyn and friend Wrendy. It was interesting seeing the landscape so late in the year. Many of the beds were bare but being prepared for what comes next. It was a very nice afternoon.

These curtains looked like the ones in Sound of Music, so Joslyn sang a little "favorite things" for us.

Sunday is the last day it is open for this year except after Thanksgiving to Dec 1st the house is open - decorated for the holiday and is like a holiday shop. Would be fun to see it then.

Pretty Shot

Evan went on a field trip Saturday - to Island Park and various other places around Yellowstone. He has a "Natural Disaters" class. Island Park and surrounding area is in a dormant crater. :-) Anyway, he took this picture with his phone. It is somewhere in Montana. I think it is a very nice shot.

Surprise!

Ryan bought himself a black lab puppy. Her name is Callie.

Obviously, the kids are in love with her.

Endeavor to see Endeavour

The space shuttle Endeavour flew over the Bay Area today on top of a jumbo jet.

A little jet lagged, I was in bed late this morning (kind of mourning not being in Hawaii). Watching news, I heard about the shuttle fly over. I wanted to see it. Too late to make it to any of the land mark fly overs, it came to me that if I moved fast enough I might be able to see it from a high spot on the Quicksilver trail. I booked it up the trail, heart beating out of my chest, breathing so heavy I think the few other people there heard that before they heard footsteps. About 15 minutes later, and even though it didn't fly where we were hoping it would fly, we did see it. Can you?

See the hat? There is a long branch hanging down above the hat. To the left of the long branch there is a twiggy branch, follow the twiggy branch down and below it you will see a white spot. That's it! I know, it's my cell phone. But we could really see it, honest! :-)

Time to go home

We headed home today. No time really to do anything. Greg had some morning business calls. We ate late breakfast and then headed to the airport. Where we stayed, the west side of the island, is dry - the temperature varies very little - it was pleasant. Hardly any wind at all - so different from Maui. There's lots of lava.

People collect white rocks to leave roadside messages.