Snow before Halloween?

I said good-bye to my beard this week. But instead of shaving it off completely I decided to try out some other styles

I felt a little embarrassed showing up to court with this one

I also voted!

The boys had fun playing in the garden after mom cleared out all of the dead plants

Our little boy isn't so little anymore

Mason needs a haircut

We had some wasp problems near our front door so we had to call the pest control guys out to take care of it. They sprayed with some stuff to kill them. The next day we found different wasps on the ground holding on to dear life. I managed to spot the queen and get a few pictures of her

That mouth is intimidating

This is a shot comparing the queen (left) with a regular wasp (right). You can see how much bigger the queen is

Mason had some fun playing Jenga this week

Mason is obsessed with making us "birthday cards" and hiding them around the house as an "Easter Egg Hunt." This was an Easter Egg Hunt of epic proportions

Normally I would think that if these two were in the crib together there would be trouble

But they were actually behaving themselves

Lyza's dinosaur collection came back from extinction in the crawl space

We have seen the moose some more around the neighborhood

This house two doors down from us is as spooky as ever

Mason helped make Halloween popcorn for preschool

And they made giant candy corn

Just as there was a spike in local COVID-19 cases and the local hospital was at 99% capacity for COVID-type patients, the health district decided to vote to rescind/cancel the mask mandate for our county. The timing seemed odd and some of the reasoning seems even more odd:

Henry had macaroni for lunch

Beginning on about Tuesday we started seeing weather warnings for a snowfall on Friday. I hoped it wouldn't happen. I was wrong. We woke up with beautiful weather and went to sleep with several inches of wet heavy snow on the ground and weighing down all of the trees (which all still have their leaves). This is what that looked like

Mason was so happy to be playing out in the snow and as you saw in the timelapse, he made this adorable snow man ALL BY HIMSELF

We had 23 bags of pine needles that needed to be picked up the next morning. Thanks Kim for all the hard work raking.

When the big kids got home from school it didn't take them long to get out and play in the snow

This is a view from our front porch the next morning. It was really pretty but you can see the havoc the heavy wet snow wreaked on the trees

Henry has also taken a liking to the dinosaurs

That shouldn't come as a surprise though because loving dinosaurs is genetic

Remember this one Kim? This was our trip to the Calgary Zoo together on the long weekend that we fell for each other

And of course Lyza learned to love dinosaurs at an early age

Saturday Lyza had another volleyball game. Her team of five was down to only three players so they played with other teams on Saturday.

Lyza has made some improvements with her serving and soon she will get it

I liked watching the team cheer at the end. Even though this is not her team they were all really nice to her.

Yesterday afternoon we got out in the snow together and did some sledding

Here is a video of the fun

Lyza made her own breakfast this morning

Mason got up early and made us an awesome coupon book

And Lyza started off the day reading a new novel her teacher bought (and left on our door step) just so she could read it. She has a very caring teacher.

We hope you have a great week. Take care.

Cookies, Moose, Volleyball, and a Gold Medal

Last Sunday when we took a walk down to the park as a family Lyza and I had a photography lesson and she really enjoyed it. She asked if we can have more lessons.

We had a roast beef dinner and said we were celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving

Why can't he use grapes while he is playing with toys?

Mars has been visible so we have looked out each night to see it shining in the sky

On the 13th it was the closest to the earth that it is going to be for decades. Here is a short time lapse of it moving through the early evening sky

Sometimes Mason does silly things when no one is watching

We had a new cookie chain (Crumbl) open in Coeur d'Alene. Kim took the two little boys to get free cookies (and some paid for cookies as well)

They couldn't wait until they were home to eat them

They also got to go pick out some pumpkins

On my way home from work on Thursday there was a line up of cars across the street from our house stopped and watching a mamma moose and her two calves. I parked the car and grabbed the camera to get some shots

Here is one of the calves

I was probably closer to the moose than I should have been so every time the mamma looked at me I got worried but eventually I felt like we had a connection and she was going to leave me alone

The mamma decided it was time to much on something else

The calves stayed behind for a bit

The calves eventually followed

A new bush to trim

The next stop was the apple tree and fallen apples

The mamma eventually joined and ate apples right off the tree

It is really strange watching the moose kneel down to eat of the ground

Then they decided to play in the front yard

And do some more eating

They were eventually frightened by a couple of big trucks and ran back to the place I first found them.

Here is a video with some clips of the moose

After dinner that night we all shared the delicious Crumbl cookies

Lyza had her first volleyball games yesterday. She worked really hard

She definitely brought her game face

I was so proud of her when she returned the ball over the net on one of the first few plays

I wasn't quite as impressed when she almost hit me with the ball 😉

It was fun to watch her because she was having so much fun

Serving was the most challenging part of the game for her and by the end she was getting really close to getting the ball over the net

Mason had his last soccer game of the season and scored another goal. Kim wasn't able to capture it because another child (who won't be named here) was distracting her. Good job Mason!

Nixon also had his last game of the season. 

He made sure he was looking his best

He played hard as usual

He played really good defense and helped his team out a lot

He even got a gold medal at the end (like everyone else on his team)

He was a pretty happy boy

Take care