Lauren Michelle (The trick or treat bag in my hand is Hello Kitty of course)
Jared Paul (don't ask about Paul)
Alexander James
Strawberry Shortcake
Chuckles
Little Sprout (sidekick to the Jolly Green Giant) with his best bud Snow White aka Jana
The Mothers of Snow White and Little Sprout, also best buds. Beanie's mom took this picture. I know this because all mothers of my generation were notorious for cutting off people's heads in their photography.
Oh those Valencias!
Poking the holes through the pattern and into the pumpkin
This is the "enough with the picture taking Aunt Sharon" look
October 7th was the first of some fun and crazy adventures we friends (MOMS) hope to accomplish over the next year. Belinda dreamed up the idea and planned the first one. These photos
are the invitations we received from her. We had no idea what we would be doing until we arrived at her home and she revealed that we would be kayaking La Jolla Cove. The one regret is that no one had a waterproof camera to capture the event but Diane (our now elected MOMS historian) put her experience in words. I will now cut and paste her retelling of the day here, since she did such a great job of it: "What a blast! It was like going through
OH! OH! OH! the girl in the bikini wants me to sit down on that thing."Hop on", she says. --But I don't HOP anymore.In the real world I sit gracefully down and then swing my legs carefully on. NO HOPPING! . BUT CLEARLY ONLY A HOP WILL GET ME ON THE THING WITHOUT FLIPPING
It is surreal. I am a little anthropomorphosized orange kayak-critter paddling in and around and among fellow kayaks-ettes in a happy wild flock of kayaks with little yellow-tipped wings flapping up and down as we scurry in and out , bumping each other like bumper cars, loosely following Kayak-King, the cute hunky 12-year old blond one.
We gather for a little Kayak-King informational lecture about the bouys and learn about some insane swimming race that people have around the bouys sometimes, and something about the tide going north or south depending on the season and how the planets are aligned. Then we go close to some "caves" that are sort of indentations at the bottom of the really high cliffs that the water is washing right up against. And we hear about those caves which would be different if the tide was lower or higher or something.
We learn about the little black cormerants that look like skinny little black geese that live on tiny juttings on the cliff, and actually prefer to build their nests and raise their young on the teensiest possible invisible ledges that they can squeeze onto. And they don't have hollow bird bones, but solid bones so they can dive 40 feet deep after fish and not get squished by the pressure, so they don't fly so well and need to catch air currents to fly much. And they have turquoise eyes.
And there are five "caves", but none of them look like caves, except the last one where the people are standing behind a little railing inside looking out at us having descended 145 steps from a shop above the cliffs in
And there is another sort of cave, except it is a hole that goes right through into sunlight and sand on the other side, which really makes me rearrange my whole idea of the cliffs, which up to then seemed pretty solid and like they were part of the land behind. It doesn't make sense, so I discount what I just saw and go comfortably back to my old reality of the cliffs.
Close to there are the most wonderful thing! The sea lions. We are very close. Like the length of a car close. There are twelve, and Kayak King says that is the most he has ever seen at once there. They are all on rocks in the water against the cliff. One is tawny instead of black, and looks like a puppy laying here looking at us. The others are very noisy.
We also see Garibaldi, which are the orange
Laura tells me she is very seasick. I am sympathetic, but feel smug, because my wrist bands have kept me comfortable. Laurie decides to go back, and that is exactly what I would have done.
We are on our way out into the ocean to see leopard sharks, and Sharon and I are racing Belinda and Rilla. Then, for no particular reason, Sharon and I are tipped into the water! The kayak is upside down, but we flip it over and
Of course, it doesn't help that I am laughing hysterically, and every time I try to stop I see my buddies laughing even more hysterically, and that starts me up again. And my life vest has been forced up around my head, which has my arms pretty much pointing straight up at the sky. And it is no longer doing a great job of keeping my mouth out of the water. I am grateful for the glasses thingy holding on my glasses, and blissfully unaware of the spectacle my cock-eyed white visor made hanging over the side of my face.
Kayak King gets on the other side of our kayak, and tells me to reach across to him. I try that, but yell, "Stop ! That's my breast, young man!" as my breast is clearly trapped under the kayak, and pulling on my arm will hurt a lot, and not budge me. (My friends are convinced that he grabbed my breast, but that was anatomically impossible, and would have been fine with me if it had painlessly and magically set me back in the kayak.) So then a nice big man, who weighed about twice as much as Kayak King (though not nearly as cute) comes up with his kayak on the other side, and helps me get the life vest down a bit so I can move my arms, and see. And then I hang onto Big Man's kayak and swing my leg up on my kayak , and Kayak King grabs it and pulls me on! Yayyy! I will not have to be towed to shore with my legs hanging down like chubby leopard-shark bait.
Only now I am on my stomach on the board with my face squished up against
"Just push yourself up and sit down". says helpful Kayak King. "I can't even push myself up on my own living room floor." I reply grimly. But then I do it somehow. The crowd roars. The fat lady is back on her seat in the kayak. All is well. We can go look at leopard-sharks.
Except now I am suddenly truly seasick. Curse you, wrist bands!! Why did you stop working?. Poor 
Now we get to have a wonderful evening at Vanessa's cool home. She has arranged a delicious meal of do-it yourself- pizza and salad, followed by pudding, and we talk for hours. It was a truly great Moms' Adventure.
Jan, we all said over and over how much you
would have enjoyed it and how you were missed. We hope Eileen is doing OK, and understand you had to be with her. The next adventure will be soon.
And we will all be at Katie's concert next Saturday. See you then. Diane"
The next day, we took Alex wine tasting. The pictures above are at LongShadow Ranch winery where our friend Mike Pouwell gave us tastes of his personal favorites. Happy 21st Birthday Alex! I love you dearly!
This year our houseboat trip gave me a renewed appreciation of how blessed we are to be able to see this part of the country year after year. I realized that I had taken it for granted when our guests, the Tafts, kept exclaiming over and over about the beauty their eyes were beholding.Because fuel prices have been up over the past few years, we intended to go only as far north as the mouth of the San Juan River (57 miles from Glen Canyon Dam). 
When we arrived at the mouth, a group of tent campers had pitched their tents on the shore right in the spot we had intended to anchor, so we made the decision to continue up the San Juan to our favorite spot between Piute Canyon and Neskahi Wash (22 miles). You see in the picture the place we anchored and the beautiful glasslike water which stayed like this for the next 4 days. The burros came with their young in the afternoon to drink from the river. It was fun to watch the babies frolick around while the adults made sure they got enough to drink. We also saw a young fox run along the shoreline across from our houseboat. One morning, I awoke to a rosy glow outside my window. I grabbed the camera and went to the back of the boat to take some photos of the sunrise. What an incredible sight to behold! 
Psalm 95:1-5 says
Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
. We had a wonderful week, although the fishing was different this year. The stripers seemed to be hibernating. The fisherman caught small mouth and large mouth bass, crappies, and catfish. We only kept a few catfish to cook up as an addition to dinner or lunch. 
Our kitchen teams did their duty with excellence! Here is Jared and Ginger doing their night of KP. Melanie was hooked on Sudoku puzzles this year and her dad was very patient to spend time showing her that the solution did not i
nvolve guessing but that a strategy could and must be used.
friend Rachael's wedding. We got the dress 3/4 completed when I had to stop work on it. I felt terrible about leaving the unfinished dress in Sally's lap, but she was very gracious and got it done. As you can see, Lauren looks gorgeous in it! THANK YOU SALLY!!!