October & November

Even though we took an impromptu little trip in October we had to come back and start embracing the holiday rush! 

October consisted of a choir concert for Cade- what a fabulous start to the year!

Carving pumpkins!

Dan

Laura

Alex

Cade

Senior Night for the Marching Band!

Cade and his good friend Mark

Halloween! Alex and his friends dressed as characters from a series called Over the Garden Wall

In November Alex kept up with his new found cake making skills and made an awesome Chocolate/Raspberry Cake for Dan's Birthday!

Speaking of Dan's Birthday, he asked me to plan a family outing- so we went to the Seattle Art Museum and then to University Ave for some of the best Thai food we've ever had. Here are some of our favorite art pieces we loved.

The main exhibit at the museum was works by and inspired by the artist of the Great Wave off Kanagawa- Hokusai. I found this area fascinating and it's hard to only pick a few to share. The process of doing these woodblock prints its just so cool. Layer by layer they come to life!

And here's the Great Wave! And another picture of what each layer looked like.

And our amazing Thai Food! Only seats a few people, they cook right in front of you, fast and fresh!

We got Pad Thai and Panang Curry, my favorite!

There was MORE marching band! I love the tradition of the team coming to the sidelines after the game while everyone sings Country Roads. This year the band learned the tune and played it instead of them playing a recording over the speakers!

Kelly and I were there through rain and cold and hot cocoa and moving drum major podiums!

I had my first assembly performance at my new elementary school for Veteran's Day! It went well!

Alex held a few bake sales- pumpkin whoopie pies, cookie cakes, snickerdoodles and pumpkin bread!

Cade participated in WIBC for the last time. This was his 3rd year being a part of WIBC and it has always been a great experience for him. This year he was able to meet Frank Ticheli and Demondre Thurman, who teaches at Indiana University where Cade is hoping to attend next year.

Dan and I got coordinating tattoos! 

They perfectly represent us and where we are in our relationship right now. We hit 20 years together on October 6th! We've had some difficulties over the last 6 years with military separations, moves, health concerns and more. We feel as though we've come out for the better on the other side- and just like our tattoos we've learned how to appreciate our stark differences and still work beautifully together. Love you Dan!

Thanksgiving was a little tricky this year because Dan had to work late the day before Thanksgiving and the boys needed to be back for a Saturday football game- but we went to Boise anyways! Loooong drive on Wednesday and left early Saturday to be back in time for the game.

The day after Thanksgiving we went to their local tree farm that had a fireworks show, a little shop, and hot cocoa! It was so cute and fun!

And where the McBrides are, games shall be also!

And because apparently Americans are crazy and start decorating for the holidays way before other countries, we went and cut down our first real tree for Christmas this season, before December! If you live locally I highly recommend Gerrit's in Rainier for your tree! Great selection, prices and they provide the tools and some hot cocoa and a warm fire when you're done.

And this all happened before the craziness that is December! Stay tuned for Christmas 2023 style!

Crater Lake and the Eclipse!

Awhile back our family made the decision not to do a Spring Break trip and instead booked a VRBO for the weekend of the Eclipse. Crater Lake, OR was set to have 100% totality and it's a national park none of us had been to yet!

Our VRBO was in Klamath Falls, OR. We headed down Friday morning so we could hit up their local Escape Room. The guy said no one had made it out of the escape room on the first try, and we've had a lot of success in the past so we were up for the challenge. Oh man! This room was HARD! I can't decide if it was just too hard, or we were just that lost. For a lot of escape rooms when you open a clue, the answers there lead to the combo for the next clue. Instead a lot of the ways to open the locks had clues isolated from the story line. That threw us for a loop. The guy said we'd only made it about halfway through the room even though we felt like we were getting pretty close. Dang! 

After the escape room we walked around the town of Klamath Falls, found a video game store for Alex where he found a good deal on some Pikmin magazines, and then we had some awesome Thai food for dinner! What a great start to our vacay!

Saturday morning was Eclipse time! We aimed to be out the door around 7am so we could drive to Crater Lake Nat'l Park and find a spot to view the eclipse there. As we were driving we noticed how cloudy it was in the direction of the park, and instead drove around Klamath Falls since there it was still pretty clear. (That pre-eclipse sun was blinding!) We pulled over and hiked up a rise in the hills to catch a view, but it really started to cloud over. Feeling bummed we headed down to our car and decided to just head out to the Nat'l park for non-eclipse related fun.

As we were driving I decided to pull over at one more spot just to see what we could see. To our surprise the eclipse was strong enough to practically part the clouds during the totality! Here's a few pics- we didn't need our glasses since it was so blocked off. While waiting we even had a bit of hot cocoa! It was a chilly morning :)

After the totality the clouds just took over again and we didn't think we'd see anything else so we resumed our drive towards the national park. Then, Cade noticed that the sun was showing again so we pulled over near Annie Falls and were finally able to see some of the eclipse with our glasses! Cade shot a pic through his eclipse glasses that turned out awesome! We stayed there until the moon had moved off the sun and then spent the rest of our day in the park. I think we were all relieved that the eclipse wasn't a total loss. It may not have been the same type of view others had that day, but it was still super awesome!

So for the record- Crater Lake National Park is pretty awesome. What a unique spot of geography and history! We did the Rim drive, which despite being listed as closed in the NorthEast corner, was open for the full circle drive! We had to stop at Rim Village for stickers and magnets, but it was a zoo. There were a lot of people there for the eclipse! 

This small rock feature in the middle of Crater Lake is called Phantom Ship. These rocks are considered some of the oldest around, as they were part of the original Mt. Mazama before it erupted, collapsed and formed Crater Lake, yet here they still show prominently!

I think our favorite thing we did at CLNP was hiking the Watchman's Tower. It was a few miles of hiking in the snow but it gave an unbelievable view at the top! Amazing views of the lake, Wizard Island and all around scenery. We'd love to visit Wizard island- but the boat tours don't run past September. Maybe another time!

Snowy trail the whole way

Alex and I actually both ended up sunburned on our faces!

Park Rangers still use this tower!

There were several little snowmen greeting throughout the park :)

After spending the whole day in the park we headed back to our cabin and made pizza! We used a pre-made dough from Grocery Outlet to save a few steps in my usual pizza making process, and it turned out SO good! We watched Loki- and tried to understand what the heck is going on in this season- and then played some Mario Party. What a great day!

Sunday we cleaned up and headed home. We decided to go back home through Bend, OR and up by Mt. Hood just for some different scenery. On a whim I googled video game stores in Bend to see if they had any cool retro stores for Alex to check out and stumbled upon a Blockbuster Video. We had watched some documentary on the Last Blockbuster, but forgot it was in Bend! We just had to stop and show the boys what Blockbuster was all about. They could see the appeal of physically browsing a store for things to watch instead of the doom scroll, lol. DVD rentals are $3.99 and you can keep them for a week. They also had a ton of merch since they're the last blockbuster, so we snagged a few things :)

Of course Carson came along for the adventure too!

Lunch on our drive home turned into a bigger deal than necessary. Tried a few local places that all ended up being closed and got tired of running around. Instead we stepped into Winco and picked our lunch and ate it at the park before the rest of the 'boring' ride home!

We're in the season of lasts with Cade since this is his Senior year, so we know there won't be as many family trips like this left! What a great weekend!