Harvest Festival

The Residential Community office at Fuller puts on a "Harvest Festival" every year where all the families of Fuller come and enjoy food, games, prizes, lots of candy, pony rides, and even a "hayride". All Community Coordinators are required to work at a booth at the event. We have chosen the hot cider booth both years now since it's the most "fall" to us. It was a beautiful night and we had lots of fun seeing all the kids dressed up in costumes. It was a little warm for hot cider, but fun nonetheless! We really enjoy being a part of the Fuller community.

Hello Honda!

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS MATERIAL RELATED TO A NATIVE OF FLINT, MICHIGAN, BUYING A HONDA. IF YOU FIND SUCH MATERIAL OFFENSIVE, PLEASE REDIRECT YOUR WEB BROWSER NOW.

Though it was sad to say bye to our Corolla, we are very excited with the purchase we were able to make this past Saturday. We are now the proud owners of a 2009 Honda Civic LX. It's a grayish, tannish color with beige interior. It's very nice and we love the new car smell!

Check out the cool split dash.

We hope to be driving this car for many years to come, which should be a possibility if no crazy woman runs another red light.

Apple picking

It's been a few years since we've done anything "fall like" and decided it was time we embrace "fall" in California. There's many apple orchards an hour or so away and we decided to go picking with some fellow Hope grads, Tony and Christen. It was nothing like Michigan apple picking, but still fun!

Tony, Noel, and Christen ready for an adventure.

Noel scouting out the trees looking for the best apple. He was VERY particular about the apples we were allowed to pick and put in the bushel.

It was quite an effort to get the best apples! Tony and Noel made a great team. Christen and I had a lot of good laughs.

As you can see, the "orchard" is not quite like a Michigan orchard. Mountains in the background, desert like terrain, and scattered trees that were NOT well labeled all made for quite an adventure. Another big difference in this orchard was the lack of donuts and cider! We were so looking forward to getting donuts and cider since that is part of the apple picking experience. However, the LINE...yes, line, was about an hour long for donuts, and the cider cost $10 a gallon! We were so desperate that we bought a gallon to share. It was definitely tasty, though I'm still not sure it was worth $10.

Studying the map...which was not very helpful at all.

Finally, a 1/2 bushel full of Granny Smiths and Romes (we split the 1/2 bushel). I've already made an apple crsip and hope to make to make some apple dumplings and an apple pie.

Goodbye Corolla

Well, it's been quite a week. The aftermath of an accident is time consuming and a bit emotional. We found out late Wednesday that the car was officially declared a total loss. We were not surprised, but it was still kind of sad. We decided we needed to go back to the collision place to say a final farewell, and check to make sure we didn't leave anything inside.

Pretty much wrecked, wouldn't you say?

Thank you for keeping me safe, Corolla! I'll miss you.

Thank God for airbags!

Bye-bye.

A New Haircut and a Car Crash

Well, it has been an eventful day. Heidi got a new haircut, and it looks great, as you can see. Then she got in an automobile accident on the way home. No one was injured, but she and her passenger (and her husband) were quite shaken up. I will be surprised if they do not total the car. Both airbags deployed, so it is good to know they work! But they gave Heidi a nice little burn on her arms.
It doesn't show up very well in the photo, but it's there. Thank God everyone stayed safe and we'll see what happens with our car!

28!

Noel turned 28 over a week ago and I once again threw him a surprise party. We had to celebrate his birthday early due to a community obligation on his actual birthday. We ate at a great English restaurant in town where Noel had "the best prime rib of my life". A couple days after his birthday he had new student orientation for his PhD program. I arranged for a bunch of our friends to be here to surprise him when he got home from the dinner. We all enjoyed singing to him and all of our friends enjoyed teasing him for being so old (for some odd reason, all of our friends our about 3 years younger than we are).

As always, Noel requests carrot cake for his birthday. I really enjoy making it for him since he loves it so much.

Here's Noel on his first day of school. Check out his new shoes and new bag! Perfect for "back to school".

Jett

I had a chance to go to Grand Rapids for a couple of days for a short work conference. It was great to see family and friends and so fun to see how big my nephew, Jett, is! He's walking all over the place now and loves his grandpa very much. He was a bit shy towards me at first, but I think we became friends rather quickly. All it took was feeding him part of my dessert each night. :)

He's very happy here because he was eating much of my sauteed peaches and ice cream dessert.
He LOVES playing with these rings.
So fun!
Here he's sporting his new jacket that I bought him as an early birthday present. Heather and I went shopping together one afternoon and I found a couple cute things for him (he'll never know that he didn't get a present from me on his actual birthday, November 1).