Thanksgiving Day

On Thanksgiving we went to Jeff and Maria's house.  There were lots of fun things to do, like make crafts (Oreo/candy corn turkeys)...

... visit with relatives...

... hang out with really cute cousins...

... and eat!

There were cute chocolate / marshmallow / cookie pilgrim hat placecards.

Jeff carved the bird.

Yum!

 Mom and Dad dishing up.

Everybody enjoyed adding leaves to the "thankful" tree.

We tried taking some photos to use for Christmas cards.  Here are some outtakes.  I think this one actually worked fairly well -- but with the low winter sun, it was so darned bright that everybody had a hard time keeping from squinting.

This one worked out pretty well, too, I think.

Rachel didn't get the memo about it not being a goofy photo. :)

I'm not sure why, but I kind of like this one.  It kind of looks like an album cover photo or something.

Jeff and Maria grew some seriously big pumpkins.

Happy Thanksgiving!

20 candles

Rachel's birthday was the week of Thanksgiving.  It's a nice time for a birthday for a college student, because we get to celebrate with her while she's home for Thanksgiving.


The day started out with lawn decorations instigated by one of her good friends.

For her birthday dinner, we went to Chile's.

Ready to dig in!

Daniel attacking a massive slab of ribs.

Intently opening some presents.

She seems to like the new watch!

Instead of a cake, Yumiko made her a pretty lemon creme pie.

Happy birthday, Rachel!

Shot through the heart

In September Lisa hit the big 1-6 (sixteen on the sixteenth -- pretty cool!).

Taking advantage of her newly-sweet-16 status, she put together a group of friends and they all asked boys to the Sadie Hawkins dance.

I didn't get any photos of her invitation, but a few days later this bowl showed up on our doorstep.  Do you think he knew how much Lisa likes fruit?

And here's what it said in the bowl:

In the afternoon they went to the park and had a video scavenger hunt.  In the evening we went down by the river and took photos of the group.

Here's the group.

The dance had a western theme, so they all wore bandannas and hats.

Being silly.

They decided to make matching t-shirts themselves.  The girls went shopping for the shirts and iron-on letters.

I like how they lined up in rainbow order.

One of the girls said they looked like Skittles.

Lisa looking cool.

It was a fun group of kids.

Aren't they cute?

More silliness.

They all seemed to get along really well and have a good time together.

After the photos they all came over to our house, where we made pizza.  It was most excellent.  But I was too busy making pizza to take any photos.

So here are a few more of the photo shoot by the river.

Ajisai

This year we planted a couple of hydrangea (ajisai) plants.  They grow like crazy in Japan where there is a lot of rain and humidity, but we're not sure how well they'll do in Idaho.

One of them did bloom fairly nicely this fall.  Here are a few photos.

11

Deep Purple

After several years, our grape vines are finally getting big enough to bear a decent amount of fruit.

A few years back, we planted a seedless table grape and three Concorde grape vines.  After a couple of years, it turned out that the vines had been mislabeled -- the seedless table grape wasn't seedless, and two of the three Concordes weren't.

So, the grapes are still very much a work in progress, but this year we finally got enough Concordes to actually do something with.

Here's what we picked...

...and a few hours later here's what they became.

Yum!