Fall Festivities and Frenzies

Judging by the dates on my last few postings, it appears I have a lot of blogging to do. (Mom, I know, I still need to post this past summer's trips.) I generally try to be brief (ha! ha!), but rarely ever succeed. I might, however, accomplish my goal this time since all the details of the past two months seem to have vanished from my mind. Maybe they are packed away in an unopened box somewhere; maybe they got lost in the move. Who knows. Hopefully my memory will be jogged a little as I edit and post some of the pictures I have sitting in our Picasa folder.

Our strawberries were sparse this year and disappeared by early September, but we were still harvesting raspberries off our bushes in late October. Here's Cora enjoying the fruits of her labor one Sunday afternoon. I think the red shoes made the outfit.

Ally's "preschool" had another field trip, and siblings were invited to come along. This time it was to the pumpkin patch at the Country Mercantile in Pasco. They went on a hayride, climbed a pyramid, pet some animals, and chose their own little pumpkins.

I was working the Hanford flu clinics again this year, so I missed out on all the fun. While I played fluzie, my friends Jenn and Karen were kind enough to sub in for me and make sure my girls behaved themselves on their little adventure. Jenn took some pictures, so I stole these from her blog.

Jenn made sure the girls got dressed; she even styled Cora's hair. Jenn, however, cannot take credit for Ally's choice of wardrobe. The night before, Ally and I went through her closet to find the perfect outfit. I begrudgingly approved the whole ensemble only because she put so much time and care into making sure each item "matched"-- although her definition was very liberal (same color and/or pattern, but generally not both).

Cora was easy-- orange shirt, farmer overalls, and a fall sweater. When you aren't even two yet, you wear whatever you're mother tells you.

We had a garage sale. It's amazing what you can accrue in a few short years, and how much of it really isn't necessary when you stop to think about it. The sale was a success, as we were able to part with most our furniture and a ton of "extra" items. We also made enough to pay for the gas in our cars for our cross-country adventure. The next morning, while changing Cora's diaper, we discovered a rogue price tag. I'm glad she hadn't accidentally been sold.  Five dollars is a great bargain!

We celebrated Halloween with a Chili cook-off at the ward building. Our contribution was shredded cheese, as most of our kitchen was already packed away and our cupboards were quite bare. We won the prize for being "the cheesiest". Afterward, the girls got dressed in their costumes and then headed outside for the Trunk or Treat.

I love Cora's costume. I had actually bought it a few years ago at a consignment store so Ally could wear it, but she refused. I was so excited when Cora tried it on and she refused to take it off. She looked so cute riding her chicken around. Almost everyone smiled and laughed, except one older lady who was way too perplexed to enjoy the visual novelty of the costume.  She just couldn't figure out how Cora made the chicken's legs move with such ease without losing her balance and falling off. Ally decided to be Minnie Mouse, but I couldn't get a decent picture of her by herself. She is doing her best pose with her friend Ashlyn on the bottom right.

Ally knew the drill and had fun collecting her candy.  Cora enjoyed the walk since she got to eat three lollipops along the way.  Her only aversion to the whole "free candy" concept was having to tolerate other people's costumes.  We've always known that she's a bit paranoid of larger-than-life creatures.  Apparently she's completely petrified of giant Lego men; they bring her to tears.

November 1st was my last day as a fluzie. It was also the day we loaded all our worldly possessions on the truck. Thankfully we had plenty of guys from church show up to help.  The official "start" time was 6 pm; our first helper arrived at 5:50 pm. Ally and Cora went and played with the neighbor boys.  I frantically boxed up some loose items.  Chris directed traffic and helped load.  By 7:30 it was all stacked very compactly into 11 linear feet of semi-truck space. I was very impressed.  (This pic is from when we started transferring our load over to the Uhaul in NC. It proves that everything did make it and that --somehow-- nothing fell.)

November 2nd was cleaning day. Again we had plenty of help, but this time it was the women's turn.  Chris kept Cora and Ally occupied away from the house while the girls from church and I made everything shimmer and shine. Our friends Nick and Thad showed up with their tools and messed around outside, blowing leaves off the trees and making the front yard all pretty. Then our Realtor Jessica came over and we signed all the papers to put our house up on the market.  (Which reminds me-- Anyone want to buy a house in Richland?)  We had dinner over at the Jones and then spent one last night in our shell of a home.

November 3rd we packed up our air mattresses, swept the floor, locked the door one last time, and headed out on out 2700+ mile roadtrip (which I will blog about in a separate post).

We couldn't have accomplished any of this without our army of volunteers (unless we had forked over some big bucks for professionals), so we are extremely grateful.  You guys saved what was left of my sanity, and made moving a less-overwhelming task.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!