Fish On!

This is one of the pictures off of the old camera that I'm finally getting to!  Dave took Owen out to fish on Fire Lake the last weekend in August and managed to catch this big ol' ugly pike!!  It poured rain and I believe this is the trip that the two of them only managed to survive about 10 minutes before I got the call to pick them back up.  It was worth it for this shot though! ;O)

Birds of a Feather..

Friday night Owen came into the office just to play with the bird.  Owen got sick of the impromptu "photo shoot" I was doing of the two of them and decided to read his book.  The bird got a kick out of the book too...

The bird took a break to love on Owen (it's hard to tell, but, here he's rubbing Owen's cheek with his beak).

 These pictures just cracked me up...I don't know who enjoyed the book more!

Pumpkin Carving...

We had Auntie Shawn day a couple weekends back and had fun carving pumpkins afterwards.  Owen was a hands-on man this year, although, he didn't quite get the concept of following the lines on the templates we had...he's more of an abstract kind of guy....I love his shirt though, I need a better picture of him in it though...the eyes are googly and they move around!

 I love how Owen has to be right in the middle of everything, especially when it comes to his dad.  Dave had a bit of trouble working around his help!!! ;O)

One last shot of the goofy kid...

So, I'm sure you've noticed that we don't have any "after" photos of the pumpkins.   That would be thanks to these two...

We carved two pumpkins that Sunday (Shawn had her own that she bought a Mr. Potatoe Head kit for and then Geoff assembled it for her...I didn't think to get a picture...it was lame) and had a third I planned to finish some time during the week so that it was ready for Halloween the next weekend.  Well, come Thursday afternoon I noticed our pumpkins were gone!!  At first, I thought they had succumb to the evil doings of local hoodlums!  But, it became pretty apparent when I found the pumpkin crumbs in the yard that it was a different kind of trickster!  The moose were back on Saturday looking for more...fortunately, our 3rd pumpkin was safe inside!!!  I don't mind the moose eating them AFTER Halloween, but, considering I spent more than $10 a piece, I was not amused!!  I haven't seen a moose in our neighborhood for months prior and hadn't crossed my mind that it would be a problem.  Last year it was December before they ate the darn pumpkins.  And for those of you that were wondering...there was no snow on Thursday so there were no hoof prints to tip me off...oh, and by the way, the 3rd pumpkin is still sitting on the porch totally untouched.  No doubt it will warm up and rot without any takers!!! ;O)

Special Treat for Halloween...

RD called Dave up around noon on Saturday and asked where we were at.  They were at the rink with Charlee and figured we'd be there already.  Not so much...we hadn't even thought about the Halloween skate they do.  So, we packed Owen up and headed over, we never would pass up a chance to hang out with Charlee!  Owen wasn't real thrilled at first, but, Dave got him one of the metal stands they have for the little guys and he regained some confidence.  We have him scheduled to start skate lessons in a couple weeks...between that and soccer, we'll be pretty busy chauffeuring him around...and so it begins I suppose!

Anyway, I don't normally post pictures of other peoples kiddos...but, since she's in disguise, i figured it was probably o.k. this one time...note that Owen is probably still a bit shorter...even with his skates on!!  That girl is one tall little cutie!

My Two Favorite Boys...

Owen was playing with my old camera just a bit ago and brought it up to me while I was playing on the computer.  I offered to upload the pics for him...I've been meaning to deal with this camera for months...there's pictures from way back in September on here still!!!

Anyway, I found this picture that Dave must have taken and think it's too good not to share...how can you not love a picture with these two in it? :O)

It's snowed ALL DAY long here today, but, is hovering around 34 degrees.  I left super early to run a few errands before picking up Owen and I'm glad I did.  It was mostly just rain in town (warmer at 36 degrees), but, the roads from Ft. Rich north were pretty rough.  We're all home and safe for the night though thankfully and enjoying the snow falling from inside!!!  Hope you all enjoy your Friday and have a safe weekend! 

One Last Picture...

Shawn will kill me when she sees I posted this picture.  But, I absolutely love Owen's expression...I can see him at 20 with his crazie auntie and the same expression...hehehe...

I forgot to mention the flight to and from Washington in my last post.  Owen was so funny.  First of all, it had been almost 2 years since I had flown last and I was a wreck.  I absolutely hate to fly and having not flown for so long made it even worse.  If it had been any longer, I swear I would have put on a similar scene to the one Meg Ryan did in that movie French Kiss when she was in the airplane simulator!!!

Anyway, Owen was absolutely ecstatic about going on the plane, especially after Alex had been here and told him about flying up.  But, a few weeks out he started pointing to the private planes at Merril Field and asking if we were going to fly in a "wittle pwane" that goes "swowy".  At first, I tried to explain that the planes were much bigger and very fast, but, that it didn't feel fast.  I quickly realized that my detailed explanation wasn't helping the situation and started agreeing with him.  I didn't really think much of it until the day of our flight.  Owen was so nervous, his entire demeanor had changed and he kept repeatedly asking me over and over if it was a small plane and if it was slow.  When we got to the airport, every employee and every passenger would bring up the big plane he was going to get to fly on and how fast it would go.  I kept shushing them and explaining that we were taking the slow, small, plane.  It was kind of funny looking back.  Anyway, by the time we got seated, Owen was super quite and still.  When we started down the runway and the engine roared he grabbed both Shawn and I and white knuckled our arms.  The face he made was absolutely priceless...had I known, I totally would have been ready with the camera!!!  By the time we were at altitude, he had calmed down and enjoyed every bit of the rest of our flights and couldn't have behaved any better.  His biggest thrill though was the bathrooms and he made sure we visited one on every plane...do you know how difficult it is to fit two people in one of those these days...it's awkward, even if one of those people are pint sized!!!  

Owen can't wait to go again though and asks constantly about it.  I feel bad that Owen was so nervous to begin the trip, I am sure he was just feeding off my nerves before we left, but, I just couldn't help it!

Shawn informed us when we got home that Owen made the flights seem shorter...which was an especially shocking statement considering two days into the trip she informed me that she was going to go home and take some "Me days'.  Between the four of us girls, we had 4 kiddos under 4 years old!  Sammee and Owen are just a few months apart and had this crazy love/hate relationship thing going.  They fought constantly, but, still wanted to be around each other.  It was kind of a weird experience.  Trapping them in a car together for a 5 hour drive was not the best way to start out a trip either (or end it for that matter!).  But, I was really glad that Owen got to meet all of the kids.  He still asks about Sammee and when she's coming to stay at his house!  I have pictures of all the kids together, but, didn't figure their parents would appreciate me posting them.

Butte Visit...

We had so much fun in Butte with Shawnie, but it was way too short of a trip.  I made up my mind that we needed to fly into Washington and drive over from there to avoid the nightmare trip Shawn and I experienced last time.  There's only one or two flights into Missoula a day, so, if you miss your flight, you're pretty much tough out of luck.  Probably wouldn't have been a bad idea had we driven the same evening we flew into Spokane.  But, instead, we waited until the next day and got a late start to boot.  We barely ended up with a day and a half in Butte and most of the full day was spent on campus and at Shawn's presentation...I made Owen go watch with me and he was thrilled to tell everyone that he watched "Sawnies pesenteetion".   

Afterwards, we did little photo shoots around campus.  Owen was less than cooperative with pictures and it was kind of cold with some wind and rain.  So, I took what I could get!!  I was so thrilled to take Owen back to our school it was a lot of fun to kind of come full circle.

This sign is outside what was kind of our "home" building for our department.  I just realized I didn't think to do the same for Dave's building...whoops, guess he should have come with us! ;O)

Here's Shawn after defending her project in front of the board.  She was thrilled to find out she passed after she realized that this wasn't just a regular check the box type thing....she said she would have made a bigger effort had she realized it could have cost her the degree.  But, I'm willing to bet that she wouldn't have done one thing extra regardless.  This way she didn't stress it! ;O)  She actually did awesome and I thought, especially considering the direction (or lack there of) that good ol' Kumar provided, she couldn't have done any better!

This is RuthAnne, Shawn, and Rikki (with Addison) at Jade and RuthAnne's house....which by the way was AAAAAAmazing!!!  Absolutely gorgeous.  We were very impressed.  Poor RuthAnne had her baby right around 10 days after we left.  We have such great timing...we were there just a few weeks before she had Karissa on our last visit!!!

What's a visit to Butte without a Blue Raspberry Sloda from Bonanza Freeze!!!  Rik and I were thrilled to introduce Sammee and Owen to them.  I'm not sure the kids appreciated them like we wanted them to though!  But, I did get this shot of Owen pointing to the WinaMucka burger for Dave.  Where they came up with that is beyond me...I can't imagine there's that many Winnemucca grown college kids at Tech!

I'm excited to get back again some day soon.  There was lots we'd hoped to do while we were there, but, just didn't have the time.  We are so fortunate to have such great friends and there's just something about Butte that makes me feel like I'm home...you know short of the excessive pollution caused by the mines and of course, the pit that's supposed to overflow in the near future with millions of gallons of acidic water...besides that it feels like home!!! ;O)