This and That

We made a fun new purchase. We've been driving our little all electric Nissan Leaf for over two years now and just love it. It doesn't have a huge range so we tend to use it for local trips and to the school and back. Anything longer we would take the Volvo. It took premium fuel and was quite a bit of money to fuel up. We toyed with the idea of replacing it with a larger range electric car since we love the Leaf so much. We ended up trading the Volvo in on a Mustang Mach-e. What a fun car to drive! We are having a ball with it and don't miss fueling up cars at all.

 I took some pictures of the dogs and thought this would be a good place to put them. We do love our Cooper, Kevin and Bean.

Max is a huge Garfield fan. Like old school 80's Garfield. We are always on the hunt for vintage items and get pretty excited when we find something for Max's collection. The kid wanted to make a Garfield cake so I put out all the stuff to make the cake and frost it and he did the rest. It turned out great and was delish! Good job Max!

About eight years ago we went to a technology open house at the college and they had a virtual reality station set up for the public to try. It was a PC based VR unit and we just loved it. We came home and priced out the new PC and headset at around $1400. We didn't love it THAT much but it sure stuck with us. So when we found out about the Oculus Quest that was in the $250 range (and it came with a $50 gift card) we decided to buy one. We've had it for about a month now and it is so much fun! I find I get a little nauseous with some of the games but the Beat Saber game I don't have a problem with so I play a lot of that. I also really like Gorilla Tag even though it's just stuffed full of loud mouthed kids. It's fun running around and swinging through trees.

Look at my cute smiling kids! I'm so proud of them.

Beauty and the Beast

 What a treat! This year both kids were in the High School play. They preformed Beauty and the Beast and it was fantastic! Wesley was Lumiere the candlestick and Max was a hat seller and a knife. I couldn't be more proud of them. They put in countless hours of practice and it really showed. What a fun evening.

This and That

Happy Halloween! Boy does Halloween look differently these days than even just a couple of years ago. No more trick or treating with my teenagers....they are out doing that with their friends this year. They did want to carve pumpkins so here they are.

I've been hauling this behemoth of a plant inside and outside each fall and summer and it's rewarded me by getting HUGE. The down side is I have very little space for it since I've started collecting more houseplants. It's now sitting where the Christmas Tree is going to go. The thought has crossed my mind to just decorate it this year. I'm pretty sure it's around 35 years old. 

We have this huge family of turkeys that have been visiting us almost daily all summer long. Three females started bringing their 20+ chicks down the driveway in early spring and each day they lounge around eating grasshoppers and drinking from the fountain. I'm glad I've created a yard that is inviting to wildlife. The chicks are now full grown and they still hang around in the back yard most days.

We have found that we really enjoy hockey games and plan to get to a game each month this winter. The October game was fun (except for the dunk guy behind us) and we look forward to seeing more.

Zinnias and Tortoises

 I planted a lot of flowers this summer. Like a lot. I wanted to see blooms all summer so I tilled up the ground right out back near the fire pit and put down about a ton of zinnia seed in four giant rows. Once they were around 6 inches tall I mulched the heck out of them with old horse hay and then they took off. By the end of the summer some of them were as tall as me.

Throughout the summer I'd go out and snip off dried blooms and drop them into a big paper bag. I think I have 6 big bags of my favorite blooms to collect seeds off of for next summer. Late winter I'll pull the dried petals and collect the seeds.

I put down several pounds of clover seed in the outdoor tortoise pen and the tortoises are loving it. We also decided to get going on building them an outdoor tortoise house. It's been on the to-do list for a couple of years and it's nice to get something started. It's an 8X8 shed that will be insulated well.