The characters of Halloween

Yea! It's Thanksgiving Day and turkey time. But this is not the reason for the post. We had another Fantastic Halloween at Kirstin and Jeff's house. W have been going there for a few years and before that, we camped out in the basement with the lights off. We didn't want to be bothered. For years 90% of the people that came to our door were high school kids dressed up like high school kids with pillow cases. We may have gotten one or two young kids in actual costumes. Below you can see Liam and Logan saying, "Where are the kids in costumes?" And they got lots of kids and almost everyone had on an actual Halloween outfit. We turned around and saw Chewbacca Logan, raring to go. "Give me some candy!"
Batman Joseph was next on the scene. He spread his wings and flew around the neighborhood, saving all the kids and their candy from the candy bandits.
Then we have Belle Lorelei, smiling up a storm. Notice the official princess crown from Gramma Larsen. She is always so cute.
And then Darth Liam Vader had to show his dark side and make an appearance. Looks like he is ready to murder one of the TMNT. AHHHHHH!
Then we has precious Snow Gigi White eating an apple not knowing that there was something wrong with it.
Yeow. This does not taste right! Oh my, I am getting sleepy.
The Barnharts all got together for a posed picture.
You can't see much from this but here is Chewbacca helping Darth Vader with his helmet.
The hostess with two of the Halloween cuties.

Twilight has gone and Daylight is here

The Vampires all flunked school , were expelled and left town forever. It was a D-.

Osceola, Wisconson train ride

On Saturday, October 25, we drove to Osceola, Wisconsin with Joseph, Lorelei and Gretchen to enjoy a slow train ride the through the St Croix River valley to Maine On St. Croix and back. We met Kirstin, Jeff Logan and Liam there. Brett, Charity and the boys wanted to come (at least Charity wanted to) but there was too much fall cleanup that needed to be done. So maybe another time they can go.
The group photo before leaving own.
The Barnharts by the track. As you can see, Gigi was not being cooperative and kept at least 90 degrees from the camera. If you moved, she moved to compensate.
Finally she dared to look up with "The Look".
Jeff and Liam came shortly after we arrived.
Then Kirstin and Logan. Well actually they all came in the came car but each had one of the Dudes and walked in separately. Then it was play time inside the Depot while we waited for the train to be configured.
Logan
Lorelei
Gigi
Joseph
Liam
The train left and I peaked out and snapped a shot of the train moving down the tracks. What was interesting as that in our car was an old-timer (volunteer) who explained how trains worked and the geography of the area. The car we were in was 50 years old. One of the most interesting parts was when we got to Marine On St. Croix. The engine decoupled form the train and drove past on a parallel track to couple back up on the other end to bring us back. It seemed so close that you could reach out and touch it. Joseph and I went to the back of the train, that became the front of the train, to watch the engine couple up. I was quite fun watching the big engine, bump into the coupling hitch on the train (only a couple feet away).
The St. Croix River
The tracks
The double tracks on the bridge. They kept the train from falling off the bridge if the wheels get off the tracks. In that case the wheels would ride on the ties that are very close together.
The old bridge over the river.
Cousins are having fun playing Peek-a-boo.
Joe, hanging on the back of the caboose. No I didn't jump off the train to get this picture. I didn't run after it. They don't use cabooses any longer (just a red blinking light) and this one was parked at the Depot for climbing.
Lorelei joined the crew.
Gigi and Logan take a peek.
The Barnhart gang
The Dudes
And then there was Liam, who was not satisfied with just standing. He has to climb up on the ladder.

And then there were leaves.

We are in the middle of the Autumn season. The day started with Judy and I watching the Dudes and having some fun time at the Earle Brown school playground. The boys love the slides and went round and round, up and down.Liam takes the first slide.
Followed by Logan. As soon as the feet hit the ground, they were running back to the ladder for another go. Then the Barnharts joined us for a fun time in the leaves.
There was a lot of leaf throwing, as you can see from Liam
Gretchen traded her wheels for the pile of leaves.
Then mysteriously Gigi was covered with the leaves. I think she kind of enjoyed it.
Each of the kids took turns getting buried in the leaves. At first Lorelei didn't like the idea but as you can see, quite enjoyed the experience.
Along came a Lady Bug, which grabbed her attention from the leaves. It crawled on her hand for awhile, until she flew off.
Logan loved Joe's bike helmet, even though he liked it best backwards.
Logan even blasted Aunt Tana with a handful.

Successful Gardening

We had a successful vegetable garden this year, after not having one for several years. It wasn't as good as Brett's 1st Place garden that was about fifty times as big, but we got a lot to eat. We planted peas, beans, onions, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers and potatoes. We also put chicken wire around every side of the garden to keep the rabbits out. I plugged all holes. In the past, the rabbits eat the peas, beans and carrots before they matured.

After we enriched the soil with bag after bag of manure, compost and peat moss we started planting. Our soil seems to turn into sand in a couple of months. But this year with the1400 pounds of stuff I tilled in, the soil actually stayed nice.










This is only about a third of the potatoes we got. We filled almost three 5 gallon buckets with potatoes, some of them were as large as grapefruits.



This is a portion of the carrots we harvested. We planted only one packet of seeds and after you scatter them and thin them out, you end up with only one fifth of them. We got the equivalent of at least ten large bags of carrots at Cub. I sliced and cooked them all up (use sugar instead of salt in the water to sweeten them) and have enough for at least 25 meals for the two of us. We got about ten meals each from the peas and beans.


We has such good success that we may expand it next year and rotate crops. Judy does not want to do tomatoes next year because we just didn't do anything with the ones we harvested. But we could make tomato sauce. I will have to get Brett's recipe.

Departure time

The time we had with Kyle and Tiffany and their family was way too short. Seemed like they just got here and then had to leave again. They were here for about nine days and it was not long enough. Thanks Kyle and Tiffany for bringing the kids to visit with us. You are missed.

Gooseberry Falls

The next day we drove up to Gooseberry Falls and spent a few hours there. The weather forecast called for thunderstorms in the afternoon and it was threatening most of the time we were there. We thought it was a good idea to start back to the cars because of the way the weather looked. As we got to the gift shop , it started to drizzle. I parked farther down that Jeff did. Jeff and his passengers made it to their car in time but me and my passengers didn't and it started to pour. We had Ellie and Didi and needed to get them in car seats and then put cameras and strollers in the trunk. Well, we could have gone swimming in Lake Superior and not got any wetter. Here are Larsen's by the upper falls.And here are Smentek's by the upper flls.
There goes Ron, Kirstin and Kyle, crossing the river on rocks, for a better photo op. Kyle decided to "climb" the cliff to get back.
Time for a rest.
Kirstin with Didi.
Here are a few photos of the Falls.