POWDER! (And the entire fall in a nutshell.)

We drove up to the top of Pillar mountain to celebrate some sunshiney snow fun. Lo and behold, by the time we got back down, we had enough snow for powder turns and sledding in our yard. Keep it coming, mother nature! NOAA says we are in for a colder than average winter... hooray!

Good old fashioned cardboard box sledding! (Those little rocks are as jolting as they look. If we had kept sledding any longer, Genevieve would have likely had a few new teammates on Team Estrogen.)

Catching up, in reverse order.

Training for Hawaii, with new goggles.



Carving the pumpkins with Pauline.

Picking out the pumpkins at the pumpkin fair. Whoa! The pumpkins sold out within three minutes of the opening bell. We need to remind ourselves to get out there early next year. Of course, the kids were enthralled by the baka-bakas. (That's Stoko-ese for chikens.)

One of Kodiak's numerous hide free money/candy/food/toys/hot chocolate/dirty diapers in hay games.

Just joking about the dirty diapers. No story there. Yet.


The One and Only Michael Kiss!



What? Never heard of him? He's the world's greatest Michael Jackson impersonator. And he came to our very own Kodiak. With the circus! The people running this circus were masters of the hard sell. We got the light sabers. Amazingly, one still works! Here's Stoko after running out of spectator steam.



Here's Genevieve with the legendary Michael Kiss.



Yeah, he's the lit up area just to the right of her. We were too cheap (I prefer "thrifty" or "economical") to take the circus people up on their offer. For a small fee, you could pay them to take your picture with Michael Kiss. You had to supply your own camera. Here are our friends Amanda and Jason and their little buddy taking them up on the offer:



Our view from the back row was almost as good, I'm sure.

Here's the balance on 5 chairs and do tricks guy.

Enthralled!

The circus also featured the standard circus lady with skimpy clothes.

Paxson: "Why isn't that lady wearing any clothes?"

Boppa: "It's real hot up there, buddy."

Paxson, for the next hour, to anybody who will listen: "That lady isn't wearing any clothes 'cause it's really hot up there."

Ahh, the circus lady. She sure could hula hoop!















Playing at the Olds river, enjoying a glorious sunny day.

One irresistible Chiniak wave.

Stoko helping Missy celebrate her birthday.

Super scary monster.

Our very first glimpse of snow this fall, back on October 3. Hiking pyramid, family style. Towards the snow. A little slice of winter up there!

Sunny beach day at Narrow Cape.

This one is dedicated to Genevieve.