Halloween lineup

Watch out neighbors, these trick-or-treaters are about to be set loose.

Cast of the year

Due to a plethora of favorable comments, here is a close-up of the cast. Even the missionaries signed it.

Jessica, Dorothy Jr

Meri, Dorothy Sr

Orion M&M, color: red

Jango "Ethan" Fett

Brayton, Clone Trooper

Broken bone number 2

A first in our family - a leg cast. This is Orion's second cast (he slightly fractured his wrist when he was three). After a fall from some playground equipment, Orion went to the doctor. No bone breaks were apparent from the x-rays but they said sometimes bones grind together enough to cause a problem. They recommended a cast for two weeks. Once he got the cast, he tried to stand on it and collapsed in pain so something is going in there. They thoughtfully applied a festive orange and black cast. Trick-or-treating should be fun.

Jessica

First baby tooth to go!

Orion's first tooth loss.

Hoop dreams

Orion and Meri are attending a basketball class.

Walking amongst the stars

After almost three years in the greater Los Angeles area, we finally visited Hollywood. We saw the Hollywood Sign, the Walk of Fame, Kodak Theater, Grauman's Chinese Theater, random people dressed up as movie characters, Rodeo Drive, the Los Angeles Temple, among other things. Everyone had a good time (except Meri was upset by a giant Elmo).

One more room

Not sure why all the house photos did not upload together. Here is the last one. We are missing a photo of the master bathroom which is not a room to be missed. Stay tuned.

More house

Boys' room, other side.













Fish bathroom.













Girls' room.


















Garage.

The greatest decade in history

Hard to believe but the decade of our youth is being memorialized. Friday was 80's dressup day at Tompkins Elementary School. These kids look great. We will continue to play 80's music (and that is some great music!) in the car and in our home and maybe they will want to dress like this all the time. I just wish I had some parachute pants to share with the boys. Awesome!

Continue the house tour

The great room. Kitchen in on the left.













The great room from the other side. Front door in the background.













The library/conservatory. The piano used to be in the great room but we moved it in here to enhance piano lessons and practice. This room is actually intended to be the dining room (it's behind the wall at the right of the front door in the picture above). We thought, "what are we going to do with a dining room?" And now it's a library.








The boys' room.

Shannon Shots part 1

Due to repeated requests from our good sister, we are introducing the first in a series of interior photos of our new home. The main delay has been remembering to take a photo when everything was cleaned up.

This spread shows the kitchen and eating area. I really like the tile - our old house's eating area was carpeted. The original floor-plan had a wall around the kitchen. Fortunately the wall was not structural and the builder was able to omit it. We lost some cabinet space with that change and made up for it with the full-height cabinets by the table. We also added the built-in pantry at the last minute. I think we ended up with even more storage space. We still haven't filled it all up.

Getting a little loopy

Behold, the world famous Tehachapi Loop. We went to visit one of the most famous railroad landmarks ever (it fulfilled a Cub Scout requirement). The Loop has been in use since it was built between 1874 and 1876. It was a novel solution to the need for the train track to climb 80 feet of elevation in a small space (there is a limit to the steepness a train can handle). The top photo is the view from the small pull-off-the-side-of-road area with a couple of historical markers. I was a little disappointed - I was expecting a park or something. You can't even see the whole loop because of that little pointy hill in the middle. Also we saw no train traffic.

That all changed on our way home. We saw a train approaching the Loop and we stopped for a photo. What you see in the lower photo is a train crossing over itself. The back end of the train is going into a tunnel while the front of the train crosses over above. That was much more exciting than the overlook spot.

The Loop is about 10 miles away from Tehachapi in a small town called Keene. Why it is not called the Keene Loop is not clear. By the time we got back to Tehachapi, the train we watched cross itself was just getting into town.

First self-portrait

Jessica is shown justifiably proud of her first self-portrait. I thought she captured her blue eyes especially well.

End of summer camping celebration

We went for a overnight campout before school started. Now that we live in Tehachapi, in the mountains, camping is just about 10 minutes away - very convenient. As usual, the favorite food item was s'mores or at least the mallows and the chocolate.