Halloween At The Fish Store

The fish store we go to has an annual Halloween party. This year at the party there was Pizza, Cup cakes, member discounts and PRIZES. To our surprise Natalie won the Kids Grand Prize and we won the adult Grand Prize! Hooray for mermaids, bananas and TOGAS!

Us with our prizes:

Natalie with all the fish store kids:

Me with a couple pirates, a hostile Mexican, a fairy, a mermaid (Natalie) and Super Girl.

PUMPKINS

It's that time of year again!!! PUMPKIN TIME!

This year we let Tom and Jeremiah join us.

I had a great time doing what ever I wanted:

Tom had a great time showing his love for NY:

And Brian made a creepy pumpkin which we will soon connect to our fog machine:

And Jeremiah very kindly cleaned all the pumpkin seeds:

Yellowstone Video

While on our trip in Yellowstone we took around 30 minutes of video. Below is about 3 minutes of the footage.

I hope you enjoy....

3.14 PIE!

62 Apple Pies this year, I believe this may be a new record.

I typically don't care much for apple pie, it tends to be mostly crust and little flavor. We however roll our crust thin and pack the pies full of as many apples as we can. Regardless a la mode is the best way to enjoy.

Boundary Waters...

I never made a post about our few days in the boundary waters. It was a fun trip, smelly, but fun :)

I believe we put our canoes in on Snow Bank Lake, did a half mile (maybe) portage to Lake Disappointment. There we spent the remainder of our time at a campsite on top of a hill. Trust me the hike up from them lake to the site was not fun considering it was mostly rock and slippery.

While there we learned you can truly gain weight while camping in the wilderness and that hiking while it rains is not very much fun.

We did however manage to have a great time, hiking/camping/cooking. I especially think Jacob enjoyed the parts that included Oreos. ;)

The camera I took along is not the best, but here are a few good pictures I managed to get.

Yellowstone and beyond...

I have always loved road trips. The first official road trip I can remember was when I was 4. Mom packed me, Dave, Melissa, James and Ben into the station wagon and we headed West. We hit up Yellowstone, Disney Land, Tijuana, and even picked up a turtle in Nebraska. I can't tell you for sure every where we went, I only remember two things from that trip. 1) Prairie dogs at Yellowstone and 2) how darn hard it is to get Chip and Dale at Disney Land to sit still for 2 seconds to take a picture.

So given my love for road trips, I try my best to never pass one up. For the past summer Tom and I have been planning a trip, we weren't sure where we would go, but we knew it had to be fun. We took out our computers and simply estimated how far we thought we could drive and then we got out a calendar and determined how many days we thought we could get away from work. We landed on a trip to Yellowstone!

We departed MN around 5-6 on Wednesday afternoon. We arrived Fargo some where around 9-10. We ate at Granite City until around 10-11. We then drove through the night across North Dakota and into Montana. By dawn we had arrived in Red Lodge, which we viewed as our gateway to Yellowstone - the final city before we road the Bear Tooth Highway into Yellowstone. So to start the day off we and to take a break from our non-stop driving we stopped at a grocery store for some food. While there we stretched, brushed our teeth, got some food and were told the Bear Tooth Highway had been closed overnight due to 'weather'. Not willing to be stopped or to turn around and head towards an alternative route into Yellowstone we drove on (even past road closed ahead signs). Thankfully the road in Montana was not closed. We did however hit the Wyoming border to find it closed. There were however quite a few other cars waiting and informed us that the snow plow was plowing the road out. So we played around in the mountains for a while.

After we got though we were finally in Yellowstone, the Bear Tooth Highway provided us with some amazing views. Then once in the park we visited Mammoth Hot Springs and were able to find a few wildlife along the way.

On our second day in Yellowstone we visited the popular Geysers. Being stubborn and wanting to see something besides Old Faithful blow we waited 2 hours in the sun to watch the Grand Geyser (which goes longer and higher than Old Faithful) blow. It was well worth it, also while waiting we were able to see Old Faithful blow twice ....in the distance. :)

Day 3 was in the Grand Tetons. We had an awesome time stopping to take pictures, hiking and enjoying the mountain air. We however did not have a great time finding a campsite, so that was a tad stressful - but in the end we were able to secure a site for the evening.

Day 4 I woke everyone up at 5:30 so we could be on the road by 6 so we could then hike to a lake in hopes of seeing moose early in the morning at the lake. We did not see any moose at the lake but we saw at least 3-4 herds of Elk along the way. Once done looking for animals we at some flap jacks and then headed East.

We drove all day and we stopped to see Devil's tower - no encounters of the third kind :(. And by 1am we made it to the Johnson farm near Madison.

That about sums up the trip, enjoy the pics!

PacNW - Day 8

Day 8! Our final day!

So we learned the day before that parking in Seattle sucks. It's expensive and it's not all that easy to come by - it typically is about $4 for the first 30 minutes to hour. So we did some research and found out that if we got there before 9:30 am you got the early bird special! So not wanting to pay $20 for parking for the day we went early so we only had to pay $10 - I recommend doing this if you plan to spend the whole day down there.

So we got there early and at the time of day we arrived the vendors were still setting up for the day. Which was fun to see the vendors with set spots getting their fish, flowers, fruits and other products set out of the day. It was also interesting to see vendors who just show up jockey for spaces to sell their goods....it brought me back to my old craft show days!!

Once everything was setup we enjoyed some apple fritters and watched the guys of Pikes Place Fish Market make a laugh. Those guys are hilarious, certainly worth stopping at the market to just see them. Brian of course drooled over the crab the whole entire time!

I could not resist taking a picture of this book....

After the morning browsing the market we headed off to the Seattle Aquarium. I'd say it isn't necessarily the BEST aquarium, but I believe that is just due to the fact that they had a lot of Pacific Fish to show off - which really aren't that colorful/exciting. They did however have a Giant Octopus, Seals, and a very nice Caribbean Fish section. Needless we kept coming back to the aquarium to just sit and watch the fish since we were downtown most the day it was nice to have a quiet place (despite what seemed like hundreds of kids) to sit down and just watch fish.

Throughout the day we spent time walking around Seattle, we visited Pioneer Square a bit - which wasn't too exciting, but they did have many nice shops. We walked the pier and saw ferries go in and out along with many cruise ships.

We wrapped the evening up with the best meal of the whole trip. So even before we left we had planned our meal location in Seattle - the Crab Pot. If you love Seafood and you love crab, the Crab Pot is the spot for you! They have on the menu 4 different feast. We chose to go for the biggest - "The Alaskan". The Alaskan included King Crab, Dungeness Crab, Snow Crab, Shrimp in the Shell, Steamed Clams, Pacific Mussels, and Audouille sausage, corn on the cob, and red potatoes in their jackets. The food was amazing and we finished every last piece. Needless to say I believe eating at the crab pot was probably one of the favorite parts of the trip for Brian.

Once we finished dinner we headed back to the hotel to pack for the early morning flight the next day. Once we returned home we immediately missed the cool and low humidity weather of the Pacific Northwest but were still happy to be home to see the kitties and the pup!