The sight and sound of melting snow is wonderful. I think it's my new favorite sound. Not that I really had a favorite sound before...

A big fail goes to the church around the corner that the kids have to pass to walk to school for not shoveling the foot of snow off the sidewalk in front of it. Despite my worries, all the houses on the side of the street the kids go down shoveled within a day. As is required by law.

As the snow is melting off the roof, we've discovered that this house has great icicle potential.

Other photos at Wheeler Farm

I don't love any of these, but some are okay, and I haven't had a strictly photography post for awhile. I went back there yesterday with my Holga. I'm still a total noob with it. I'll post if any turn out.

Aaron at Wheeler Farm

As you can tell, most of these were taken when he didn't know.

Lily at Wheeler Farm

A couple of weeks ago--the last warm day of the year--we headed over to Wheeler Farm for a little late fall outdoor exploring. There are more pictures of Lily because she actually likes and asks for her picture to be taken. I'll post Aaron's in a separate post so this won't be too long.

Am I the only one that finds it amusing that the band Barenaked Ladies has a children's album out?

Fact of the day

Today I learned that a clove is the dried flower bud of a certain type of myrtle tree.

Fish tank project

We've had this old fish tank in our garage for years. Some neighbors gave it to us when they upgraded. We used to have fish. Like 7 years ago, but then they all died and we got a piano that took up the tank spot. So now that we have more room, we decided to get things set up again. The only thing is I kinda hated the base color. It was kinda beat up and also a sickly orange-honey-brown color. So I decided to paint it.

So I present to you before:



And after:

The guy at home depot told me it should take 2 coats of paint. Try 4. I don't know if it was something I did wrong, or if it was because it was plywood (I read online that plywood is very porous and likes to soak up the paint) but yeah. Four coats. Oh well. Thanks to Jennifer for your helpful tips!

I'll have to take an after the after picture once we finally have fish in there.

Pumpkin Carving with Grandma and Grandpa

Halloween

This year we had a Ghostbuster (who ya' gonna' call?) and a wizard (old school, not Harry Potter).

So for whatever reason Aaron recently has hated to get his picture taken. (And by recently I mean the past year or more.) So this first one I was trying to get before he noticed, but he saw and started running. And shaking his fist at me.

Inside, we pretty much had to tell him that if he didn't let us take his picture, he couldn't go trick-or-treating. Then he wouldn't smile. Lily was trying to "help" him smile.



And finally the best we could manage:

Well the sun just peeked out, so hopefully this will all be gone in a few hours, but here's what we woke up to today.

The rest of the cruise photos

The rest of the cruise photos

Pictures from Puerto Vallarta.

Puerto Vallarta

Still here.

Click below for pictures from our excursion to Mazatlan.

Mexico Cruise

Cabo Beach

Aaron loved playing on the sand near the ocean. Lily decided she preferred the kiddie pool. Which was understandable after seeing how much sand Aaron pulled out of his swimming suit.

Cabo

This is after we got to port. We later went to a resort beach (pictures there in the next post). I should mention that on a rock neighboring that crab, I dropped my lens cap. Michael heroically rescued it by climbing over the fence.

I have to say that I was not impressed by the Cabo tourist trap marina. Hey guy(s) yelling at me, if I want a ride to a beach, I'll let you know. One funny thing was that one of the booths offered me a "Mexican GPS". Which was a map. We wanted to get some cash to buy some ice cream while we waited for the beach trip. The ATM wanted to charge something like a 35$ fee. Yeah, we didn't get ice cream.

Towel creatures

Every couple of days, the people who made up the room would make these: