Pet Viewing Area Upgrade

Around a year ago we had a bench custom build by Jeanne's dad to fit in the area next to our front window, the whole purpose of the bench was basically to allow the animals to look out the front window...secondary purpose was of course to add some additional setting to our front room.

So for about a year the bench has sat in our house with random blankets to soften the bench for the pets. BUT NO MORE will the animals need to worry about a soft spot to lay while they stare down those who walk by our house. Finally I bought some foam and sewed a cover for it.

Here is the final product...ignore the fact that it looks like everything is overly yellow....perhaps tomorrow I'll try to take a photo and post what it looks like with natural light.

We Made a Flip Video

It makes us laugh.

Baker Boo

Yesterday was Baker Boo at Baker Park near Plymouth. It's a fun event planned by Baker Park each year were campers come to camp and during the day there are activities planned such as: pumpkin carving, rock climbing, mini golfing, and other carnival like games. Beck and Mark evidently do this annually and decided to invite James, Jeanne and Natalie - I just tagged along for the fun. What a great event! The day activities were great and then in the evening they have the kids do a costume parade and then after that they go around to each camp ground trick or treating! It was a great day.

Natalie and Alex along the parade route, we saw another mother stopped so we had to also:

Natalie, Alex and Tony in costume:


Natalie and Alex showing off their face paintings:

And since they showed off their face paintings so did we:

Pumpkin Carving!

We have finally carved the 71 pounds of pumpkins.

Here is how they started:


Brian's pumpkin #1, carve time = 2 hours:


Kate's one and only pumpkin carve time ~30 minutes:

Brian's pumpkin #2, carve time < 10 minutes:

The complete family of carved pumpkins:

The Christmas Tree Hunt was successful!

Today we traveled all the way to Wisconsin to St. Croix Valley Trees, LLC to find the 'perfect' Christmas tree for us. We headed out with Pops, Sandy, and Aunt Shelley to the tree farm to pick out four trees - everyone but us picked a Fraser Fir we ended up with a Balsam Fir. I'm quite happy with our decision. It was a great day with lots of laughs and many stories...

Pops, Shelley and Sandy - pictured with Sandy's magnificient Fraser

Brian and Me - Pictured with our wonderful Balsam Fir.
Sandy and Me - I took this picture while walking....

Fall and Winter Collide

I took this photo out our front window. I believe it truly expresses how crazy fall in Minnesota can be - especially this year.

Pumpkin Patch

On what was probably the coldest weekend this fall we decided to visit Apple Jacks Orchard (and pumpkin patch) in Delano. The weather was in the 30s and boy was it cold! We did however manage to go through their 5 acre corn maze, eat some great apple dumplings and we loaded up on around 100 pounds of pumpkins....oddly Brian and I came home with around 70 pounds worth - even though we only purchased 3 pumpkins.