The Eve of All Hallows Eve

It's a dark and stormy night here in Maple Ridge, on the eve of All Hallows. The wind howls round the eaves and the puddles aren't shallow! (Ok, Im not a poet).



The Pumpkins were polished and washed of their muck.Dave saw the task at hand, exclaiming, "OH SHUCK!
To heck with small knives and wee cutters you fools.What this job requires is ye olde POWER TOOLS!"



With earnest concentration, this Birthday gal drew, a face that when carved and completed , might just say meow.
Disembowling the gourd of its putrid insides,
Caused this boy some queasiness and attracted some flies!
We picked out the seeds, which we will wash and will toast. To offer tommorrow to all hungry ghosts!
What fun they did have carving Jack o Lanterns. And were careful enough to not need interns.
The entire event was overseen by young LLary, The carvers and cutters, made sure not to tary!

Lit up by their candles on the front porch they sits,
To scare away all of the evil Spirits!

The month so far!

Keith's brother, Mike and his family have recently moved to a wonderful home close to the beach. Possibly an area we would like to go to when we are ready to downsize. Then we have a week of visiting and over this weekend , had 11 people sleeping at our house! Only two were shortstay. And I wonder why I was thinking we should downsize. More about that later though. Back to our visit with the beach bums.

We took Nick and Lexie out to see their cousins at the new place. We had a nice walk to the beach where, with help from Nick, the girls found a few new additions for their ``Beach Glass`` collection.

With the new bridge, it is only a 40 minute drive to their place. Before the Golden Ears bridge, it was near a 90 minute trip!

We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving day, with just Keith's brother Norm and his three kids for dinner. Also the little boy from next door. Then Keith`s Mom and Dad, Sister Donna and her kids, came by for dessert. Heidi had made homemade pumpkin pies and lemon almond cookies with cream filling! SOoooo yummy!!!

Then, this past weekend, we celebrated my Dad`s 65th birthday. Mum and Dad spent a few days here and we had a party on Sunday. My sister Carol made him an incredible cake decorated with a space theme, which of course is one of his favorite topics.

It was also my younger twin Sisters, Sheila and Cathy`s birthdays. Cathy couldn't be here, so Sheila got all these cupcakes just for herself!!!

Carol is so talented with anything she puts her mind to. She is trying to get into cake-making as a side line. I think she will do well once word gets out how nice her cakes are.

After cake and presents, the kids got out Pictionary and had a great time playing together.

On a more serious note, a dear friend of mine is recovering from surgery. We were friends from way back in grade 5. Sometimes it takes something to shake us up to remember how much we love someone and to remember to make more time for each other.

Our Daughters best friend lost her Grandad this week. We were at the service today. Heidi has spent all week with Stephanie, for comfort and to help with arrangements. They are such close friends and their relationship reminds me very much of the one I have with my afore mentioned dear friend.

Back to work tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by.

Wisdom

She is recovered now, but it was not pleasant. Heidi had her wisdom teeth removed, all four at once. She had to have it done at an oral sugeons. Her cheeks were so swollen and she was on a liquid diet for almost a week. I must say, she lookes adorable in the ice pack! When she started feeling better she got mad, as she realized she forgot to ask for her extracted teeth! Had she had the job done at out regular dentist, it would have been automatically covered by our dental insurance. But the specialist wants money up front and then we submit the bill to our insurance for compensation. I mad a big mistake not getting at least one of our children to become a dentist! We had to pay $1833. !!!!! Its good to know we get it back, but what about families who cant get that kind of money??? All hail the old Master*Card!

Ive been off work all week. I had a bad cold which has turned into a bad dry cough that kept me awale all last night. Well actually, I was okay untill 2.30 am. But Keith was so tired that he snored none stop. At 230 I finally went to sleep on the couch and thats when the cough decided to keep me company for the rest of the night!

The cat had yet another visit to the vets for an absess. Luckily we cleared it with just antibiotics and hot compresses. This is the third such event in as many months. We have tried keeping him in, but he cries and cries until I just cant stand it. So we are just keeping him in after dinnertime for the night. The thing is, he is a wimp. The cat that picks on him, comes onto our property and bullies him while he cowers and doesnt even try to defend himself.

On a possitive note... I got accepted into a four day education workshop for work. There were only 30 seats in the entire health region and I had to apply for the spot. That will be in November, should be good!

Did I mention that our house was flooded in August? The same week, David and his GF suite flooded also. Ours was just water but they were swamped with sewage back up! So they evacuated into our house. His room right now is a maze of stacked Rubbermaid totes. Finally, lastweek, Our basement was fully restored. We ended up having to replace the flooring. This all happened because the drains could not handle the ammount of rainfall we got one evening. It was enough to blast the one tonne grate off the end of the culvert and shoot it eight feet away!

By the way, did I mention that Heidi got her learners licence? She is doing really well! But they cant take their road test untill one year has passed. When I was learning, you only needed two weeks practice!
Andrew has started attending a youth church program. Of course he has an ulterior motive... There is a girl there that he likes! She is a long time friend, so its nice that they are back in touch. She is studying to be a missionary, so I hope he doesnt get any funny ideas! It would be just like him to go off to Somalia or somewhere to help solve the worlds problems!