Pumpkins and Caterpillars

October 22nd - Random Acts of Kindness.  The lot I usually park was full when I returned from a meeting and I was going to have to pay for another space in another lot, but a very kind gentleman handed me his receipt as he was leaving!

October 23rd - These red lumps are koi-shaped ice cubes! Cranberry juice frozen in sprite.  (They look cooler in person.  Cooler, ha! get it?  Cooler ice cubes?)

October 24th - I have the privilege to work with a bunch of great women befriend them as well! (Do super-swanky I-Phones have a flash? Then they might be worth it.  Might.)

October 25th - It was cold and rainy day today so it was nice to have have this bright tree out my window.

October 26th - I went to a school for their Penny Harvest kick-off assembly today and was pleased to see that they already had their Wall of Caring started on the wall.

October 27th - Pumpkin Carving! I had the family and a couple friends over with their kids for pumpkin carving on Saturday.  The grape caterpillars and mummy dogs were a hit and everyone had a great time.

My boss's cutie son, Dax. Atticus is the Batman behind him in the picture with everyone. 










Oct 28th - Kevin made a really delicious gourmet meal tonight, complete with homemade honey-sage bread, roast chicken stuffed with apples and onions, roast carrots, gravy (I'm not a gravy fan but this was DE-licious!), and vichysois (swanky name for potato soup).  Very darling.

 I even had leftovers for lunch today.  Yum!

Go West - to California!

Get ready for lots of pictures!!

Sticking with the theme - a picture of something I'm grateful for everyday we have Monday and Tuesday's pics before I went to California with Mom. 

October 15th - I love fall, and saw this tree at a school I visited today.

October 16th - I babysat the kids tonight and managed to get this pic of Connor, Corinne wasn't so wiggle free.

October 17th - 21st Mom and I went to California, from Monterey to Santa Barbara for a great little trip.  Mom did a fantastic job planning the whole trip, and picking GREAT hotels. 

We spotted otters from our table while eating lunch! 

We had lots of fun at the Monterey Aquarium.

Jellyfish out of plastic.

This is the Weedy Sea Dragon!

Shrimp hanging on under the coral.

And more jellies!!

Jelly light fixtures below!

More real jellies -

This is Cannery Row - the same that John Steinbeck wrote about in...Cannery Row.

Surfs up, dude!

We drove around Pebble Beach and had some great views. 

This is Seal Rock, and the Sea lions climb all the way to the top! You can see them through the telescope (Mom just thought I suddenly got really bad at photography all of a sudden.)

That black lump to the left of the rock is an otter! See it, see it??

This is the famous Lone Cypress tree, which is not so spectacular. The running joke the rest of the trip was, "is that it?"

Yep, that's a jacuzzi IN our room.  There's also a fireplace and the shower has two shower head.  Fancy fancy!

On the way to Carmel, we stopped at the butterfly trees, with great big Eucalyptus trees with peeling bark.  This little garden is the migratory spot fr hundreds of Monarch butterflies, and there were quite a few when we were there.

The bougainvilla is everywhere and beautiful!

We had really good clam chowder at a little hole in the wall restaurant - Demetra's.

There were lots of art galleries.

Lots of really cute houses around Carmel.

Wineries from the car, on the way down to Cambria which has a scarecrow festival every year where each store and hotel has a 'scarecrow' representing them.  This is a good likeness of the owner of the Wild Ginger restaurant where we had lunch.

The beach just across the road from our cute little hotel in Cambria, and the Pelican Inn scarecrow!

Lots of jellies on the beach.

We stopped in the Danish town Solvang for a danish, and they were having a scarecrow festival too.

In Santa Barbara we went to the mission, and the palm tree beach!