Full circle to fall

It's been a little over a year, and starting with the first day of school, we are coming full circle to documenting the same events as last year.  Although we attended the wooden boat festival last year, I can't remember if I posted photos or not.  The kids still have their creations from last year on their dressers but couldn't be convinced to send them off as gifts.

Kate working on the tiller 

 

The Wooden Boat Society provides the tools and materials and they even provide several different hull shapes to choose from.  If allowed, James would have painted layer over layer over layer on his boat.

 

 

Creations from 2012 and 2013

 

 

The farmers market really died down after Labor Day.  There are less booths and people, but the vegetables are really hitting their stride.

 

Kate selected romanesco for dinner one night.  It's always fun to cook something new, but I think I loved the spicier cousin to broccoli and cauliflower more than everyone else did.
Our potatoes are everywhere and super fun to pick and eat.  The kids love the Magic Molly purple potato not only for its looks but the taste too.  We also have a few fingerlings and some Yukon gold.

Our crazy potato patch

 

 

James digging and washing some potatoes to share with Kate's class.

 

 

 

Our flowers are doing really well too, but unfortunately the heavy ice that killed the grass also killed most of the raspberries.

 

 

My neighbor tells me these raspberries are on a two year cycle, so maybe the stems that will bloom next year were not affected?  I hope so as we really enjoyed eating the berries last year.

  

 

Also in September... 

 

We made another trip to Diamond Creek.  A perfect hike for the family and a chance for the kids to play in the water (because they're crazy).

 

 

View of Mount Iliamna from the beach

 

 

 

This fall, Kate started running Cross Country after school.

 

Her school is 3rd -6th grade and offers amazing after school activities.  Sometimes they run at the school and in the surrounding neighborhood, but they also run to the beach as well as along a set of wooded hiking/skiing trails.  I helped chaperone the trail runs:  Forty kids would jump off the bus and take off running in the woods. They briefly covered bear safety before leaving school and even gave a few kids whistles once brown bear tracks were photographed on the trail and published in the paper.  So, in addition to a few black bears and moose, there is a known brown bear thought to be old and solitary who lives in the Rogers Loop area as well.  The PE teacher claims no animal would make itself known with all the noise and traffic of the kids....so off they go.  Nuts.  Running in the woods and talking to friends is quite possibly the most perfect activity for Kate though.

One Saturday morning we were driving down the hill from our house for breakfast.  The bay was calm but the waves were rolling in in sets.  Brian and I looked at each other at the same time and said, "It looks like Cape St. Francis out there."  We drove to the beach to watch for a minute, and even saw a local coffee shop owner/surfer checking it out as well.  Brian bought a thick wet suit, booties, gloves, and all in California, and it seemed like the waves were calling him that day.

 

Unfortunately, by the time we finished breakfast and got him packed up, the wind had really picked up.  He went out and caught a wave but said it was an extremely hairy scary experience (although not too cold if you can believe that). There were several people out, mostly with stand up paddle boards.

 

 

 

Brian on the wave below

 

The same day of surfing, we noticed termination dust for the first time across the bay.  Termination dust is fresh snow on the mountains come to terminate your summer.  We should see snow on the ground in Homer about a month later.

View of fresh snow on the mountain tops

 

 

Snow may be a month away, but we are still having fun on the beach building cool structures,

 

lounging,

 

 

and finding coal.

 

There is a lot of coal on the beach here, and sometimes you see people collecting it to take home and burn or using it for campfires on the beach.  James just likes to smash it or write with it.

 

 

Now that James is a student at Paul Banks, he gets to invite Kate to the school's movie nights.  About every 6 weeks, they show a movie on Friday night.  All the gym mats are out and the kids wear pajamas, bring pillows, and eat popcorn.  It's a hoot.

 

The kids also spent the night together aboard Hickory as Brian organized a Hickory kids sleepover.  They are still talking about how the popcorn was served via dumb waiter from the galley to the wardroom.

 

In October, a new figure skating program started that Kate was excited to join.

 

She has been working on her crossovers and more.

 

 

Just before Kate's class starts, James is dabbling in Homer's learn to skate through hockey program.  Learning how to put on all the gear was a learning experience for me

 

Week 1, he cruised around with the pusher.  Week 2, they took it away and he fumbled, fell, and got back up for an hour.  It was painful to watch.  The coaches insist he will just catch on.  We'll see. For the time being we are motivating him with Gatorade.

 

 

Thankfully, James comes off the ice with a smile and a super sweaty hockey mullet.


Not sure if this is a good idea or not, but Kate's Girl Scout troop needed a leader or it was going to fall apart, so I stepped up.  Our first outing was to Soldotna for a hay maze.

 

Being from Michigan, my mind was thinking corn maze.  This was in no way similar.  It was a  3 story maze of tunnels built with hay that will be used this winter to feed the camp's 18 horses.

 

 

The girls had flashlights and crawled right in.  It took them 15 minutes or so to crawl through, navigate the wrong turns, cross a bridge, up a ladder, and who knows what else before exiting via a
slide.


The girls loved it and probably went through 6 or 7 times.  Despite their best efforts to get me in, I found the small tunnel to be suffocating and I couldn't even bring myself to put more than my head in the tunnel. 

Last year, I started a separate page on the blog for sunrise and sunset photos but barely added any photos after establishing the page. As fall rolled around this year, I realize these spectacular scenes are most common in fall.   If I remember correctly, last fall was slightly more amazing in the sunrise and set department. Either way, the scenery really never gets old regardless of time of day.
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