november 18

wow, no sooner did fall arrive, it seems like winter did too. one week it's all floating cranberries and beautiful trees, the next it's sleet, snow, and hail! on monday i was smugly admiring the beautiful snowy mountains in the midst of a fantastic, mild, sunny day and then whammy we're in the midst of slushy horribleness. i do like the excitment of not having a clue what tomorrow will bring. now that i come to think of it, life feels a lot like that at the moment. 2011 has been a tough year so i have big hopes for 2012.

zoe and grandad's parsnip noses

practice christmas dinner before mum and dad had to head back to the uk

steveston's new beautiful orca sculpture

this week's cute zoe quotes: can i put the soap cheese in the dishwasher? [orange dishwasher tablet] and i'm using my magnifinding glass [which, when you think about it, is a much better term than magnifying glass!]

november 1

halloween was a lot of fun. zoe was very excited about it this year. she kept asking every night whether it was time to trick and treat. yesterday she spent all day asking 'is it tomorrow night now?' [because that's when she'd been told she could trick or treat!]. aly was a witch, zoe squeezed into her tinkerbell costume again and toby was a jedi for the 3rd year in a row [he's a little lacking in the imagination department!]. considering how few houses were decorated for halloween this year i swear we had twice as many trick or treaters. it didn't help that aly was left to distribute candy unsupervised and went through half of our supply in the first half hour [so sorry if you were late to our place - i know we were scraping the bottom of the barrel with the halloween pencils!].

another busy month. aly decided to join the volleyball team at school, girl guides has started again, work has been very busy, and toby is playing hockey 4 or 5 times a week [we all went to a game on sunday and his team rewarded us by winning in a very exciting, if chilly, game]

mum and dad have been here for a few weeks now. it's so great to have them around. it's been pretty low key, but we've managed to squeeze in a fair bit of geocaching, a trip to the pumpkin patch and lots of farmers market visits. this weekend we're planning a [very] early christmas dinner with them which should be fun.

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