After 5 months of not writing on my blog, I'm going to try to recommit to this space. With a new house, moving, and a new job things have been a bit overwhelming. The new house is settling down now. The new job I'm not sure will this year. It's a lot of new all the time. Once I get through a whole year's cycle, I think it will get easier, but right now it's been quite a challenge. Anyway, in October Mike and I went for a fun weekend in Vancouver to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. We truly enjoyed wandering around Vancouver and look forward to returning again...We'd like to go back in warmer weather and also take Jackson. We spent a cold morning walking the seawall and then checked out the Aquarium in Stanley Park as some where to warm up for an hour or so. They have a great jellyfish display and a good dolphin show. We had a fun lunch in Stanley Park, then took a water taxi out to Granville Island where we had a great time wandering through shops and picking out some treats at the food market there. Then, we went to a NHL game to see the Vancouver Canucks play the Calgary Flames. We packed a lot into a short weekend trip!
Halloween has been fun too. Jackson picked out a pumpkin that probably weighs more than he does. Of course, he was tired of carving not long after we started, so mom had to do most of it, but he did design the face. All told, we carved 4 pumpkins. 
I pulled out my old standby witch costume for school, but added a new feature by making some fun shoes to go with it out of an old pair of pumps that I needed to toss anyway. The papermache pointed toes did last through the day, but not much more than that...Still, it was fun.
I made an astronaut costume for Jackson. We used his rain boots, spray painted black, his white pants from Karate, and a sweatershirt that I sewed patches and nylon utility straps onto for the top. Here he is in the school parade, where he only wore the easy parts (too crowded for the helmet and jetpack) but he had fun.
We made the helmet out of papermache that I then cut a space in and lined with some black felt. It had trouble holding it's shape, but worked well overall. Jack insisted on a microphone--his favorite part I think. Het spent lots of time singing into it and being a ham...next year perhaps we should dress him like a musician or rock star...
Then, of course, he also needed a jet pack, so we had to add that. It turned out to be a pretty cute costume overall.
We just walked to the houses around ours to trick or treat. There weren't many with people home...a very different neighborhood to our old one, but Jack got plenty. We were home in 45 minutes. All told, we got 10 kids at our house. We have to buy a lot less candy here than we used to! 
Then it snowed here on both Friday and Sunday! It's an early in the year for snow here; I've never seen it in November while I've lived here. They are saying it's going to be a wet winter. We'll see if that's true. This is after several hours of hard snowing, so it doesn't really build up very much. It's very wet, slushy snow. The house looks pretty with a little white.
