Bloom and Sprout: 2012

We've Moved!

Well, I've been given notice that I'm at my 1Gb of storage for Blogger. Of course if I pay a monthly fee they will increase my storage but I'm looking to keep things free. I've set up a new Wordpress account. The address is: http://jisforjasper.wordpress.com/

Happy Halloween!

Fantastic night with a potluck dinner at the neighbors house and then we all went around the neighborhood in a big group. The boys got LOTS of candy all switched out by the mysterious Halloween witch. They will wake up to a new toolbox (for Will) and a Brio Travel Train (for Jasper). We also have a dentist appt tomorrow morning which is amazing timing. Honestly, I didn't even plan it that way!

Skatebowl

The mom of one of Will's friends (and my friend too) had a Roller Skating 40th Birthday party at the Skatebowl. It was super fun, even though the photos look so calm. I loved this rink because it wasn't full of too much fancy skating action, a lot of people were just your average relatively unsteady skater. Will attended a lesson before the party which helped immensely. He went from hardly able to move to doing a few simple tricks!

Halloween Decorating

This is phase one of Will's decorating. I'll try to take a picture of the final phase tomorrow. Because of that sign, Jasper said to people when he went out tonight, "Trick or Treat Smell My Feet!"

Will has been looking forward to Halloween since September. We'll be sorry to see it go!

Fall Hike

This was quite an adventure for a bunch of two year olds!

Jasper LOVES to find tiny mushrooms.

Fog For Sale

This month has been a whirlwind of activities. On October 1st I allowed Will to finally get out the Halloween decorations and within a few hours he had fully decorated the house and was filling up his red wagon with corked bottles of fog (from the Halloween fogging machine) which he and his friend Owen sold door to door to all the neighbors for 25 cents a bottle (free refills, of course). We've had apple and pear picking, pumpkin farm visits, corn mazes, cider pressing, Halloween parties, and a lot of wonderful surprises. One morning we woke up to find a huge 100 pound pumpkin sitting outside our door! Another afternoon we discovered a bag of Halloween crafts and goodies brought over by friends.

On Again!

The computer has been dead for most of this month but THANKS to my grandparents, we are back online again with Windows 8 after wiping the entire computer clean and reinstalling software. I hope it holds as it has been torture without the computer!

In the meantime I'm back into knitting again as the weather grows more cool. I have MANY projects to share but here is the latest hat for Jasper. It is actually about an inch too short so I'm either going to frog it and add the missing inch or give it away and start another. It is a very fun hat to knit though because you knit the cabled band and then graft it onto the rest of the hat.

Beach Walk

Fisherman's Festival

We love this festival! There is great seafood and maritime themed activities for the kids--all free! The second photo is cooking salmon in the sand.

Pond Exploring

Jasper saw a river otter this morning at the pond. Our hope was to catch some frogs or see dragonflies but we were so surprised when a river otter popped up and spent the entire morning diving down and crunching something he was finding on the bottom of the pond. It was quite a surprise and Jasper screamed with delight whenever he dove down under the water and popped back up again!

PDZ

We love the zoo in Tacoma and had a few visitor passes this summer to use up. This zoo is just incredible and so great for toddlers. We've seen all kinds of baby animals over the years and today we watched the zookeeper feed a bottle of milk to a brand new baby Sumatran Tiger. So cute! Jasper also loved feeding the goats and watching the polar bears catch fish. Oh, we also saw walruses mating and kissing each other with their whiskery lips!

Sliding

Adopted

The kittens went off to their new homes a few weeks ago. The black kitten was at first named Petunia by her new owners but then we learned that Petunia was actually a boy so he has since been renamed Oliver. The other two orange tabbies were adopted together.