Fishing anyone?

Eric and Evan went ice fishing on Utah Lake yesterday. I've yet to hear details but I do know they didn't catch any fish.

Happy Evan. A life long dream fulfilled.

A birthday guest

Callie made an appearance last night for the slicing of Greg's Birthday Crisp*.

She contributed a lot of energy to the gathering.

She did calm down but her appearance was short lived because I said she had to go back out.  Ryan petitioned his father saying, "It's your birthday..." but Greg said, "Respect your mother's request."   Ryan took her out and when he came back in said, "Callie is offended and just for that she says she's leaving."   which she is - and so is Ryan - both headed back to Provo today :-(  Eric left yesterday :-( Evan and Claire fly back tomorrow :-(   *Just in case anyone was wondering about Greg's no dessert rule - Crisp is not strictly a dessert - it can be considered breakfast food because it is really just upside down oatmeal.  

Someone had a birthday

Can you tell whose birthday it is today?

(coolest candles ever by the way - they are called Prism candles, Claire brought them home from school - so cool in the dark and the flame changes colors)

It's Greg's birthday! And don't count the candles, they're not indicative of what birthday it is. :-) Yay Greg! Happy Birthday!

Monterey Bay Aquarium

We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium on New Year's day. We did something we usually don't do - watched a presentation in the auditorium. Can you guess what it was about?

Captivated (sleepy really is the word) audience.

There is a newish exhibit on Jellies. It's groovy! Take a look here.

After our visit to the aquarium we had dinner at the Fish Hopper. Even though is was a very chilly day and cold evening, Monterey was beautiful with clear skies.

Happy New Year!

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.